Olga Neymann was born in 1860 in Janesville, Wisconsin. Her parents took her abroad when she was very young. She attended schools in Switzerland and Germany as well as Miss Anna Brackett’s private school in New York City. She earned a bachelors in literature at Cornell University. On January 29, 1881, Kappa Alpha Theta’s Iota Chapter was chartered at Cornell and she was one of its three founding members. Her time as a collegiate member was relatively short as she graduated later that year.
The charter members of the Kappa Alpha Theta chapter at Cornell University
Neymann had hoped to attend dental school in NYC, but women were not accepted there, so she enrolled in the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia. She earned her D.D.S. in 1886.
Good Housekeeping, 1889
Dental Cosmo, 1892
On October 24, 1893, she married Carol Glucksmann. An article which appeared in many newspapers around the world in 1899, called her “the feminine pioneer of her profession in New York city, where she established herself more than half a dozen years ago. Modest and retiring shrinking from attracting any undue publicity, she has pursued her vocation in the face of the prejudice and opposition with which a woman usually contends when she enters a path of labor untrodden by sister workers, with courage, industry and perseverance, united to ability. She now commands an extensive and increasing practice that cannot fail to be gratifying to herself and encouraging women to how her example.”
A daughter Vanessa was born in 1894. When asked why she chose dentistry as a profession, the article stated “she considered it an excellent field for intelligent and industrious women who are compelled to earn an independence and one of the higher callings that enables a woman to pursue a vocation and superintend a home under the same roof – a union that to one who possesses her fondness for a domestic life presents irresistible attractions.”
She attended Cornell’s 1907 Commencement.
She was a member of the First District Dental Association of New York, the Woman’s Dental Association of Philadelphia, and a myriad of other organizations.
Her husband died in 1913. In 1916, she attended her 35th class reunion at Cornell. The May 3, 1923 Cornell Alumni News reported she was “a teacher of speech improvement, in charge of the correction of all speech defects, such as stammering, lisping, etc., in the speech clinic of the Department of Neurology, Cornell Medical College, New York, and the clinic of speech defects, Bellevue Hospital, New York, and teacher of speech improvement in the Children’s Hospital, Randall’s Island, New York.”
Olga Neymann Glucksmann died in 1927.
