Mathilde Galland was born in
Como, Italy to a Swiss Protestant father of Italian ancestry and an Austrian mother who had grown up in Czechoslovakia. Her father was a PhD agronomist who worked for the City of
Geneva and her mother was a homemaker. Mathilde was the eldest of four children. In her early childhood, the family lived in
Grand Lancy, a suburb of Geneva. She often accompanied her father on his forays into the woods for the study of mushrooms, snakes, and other animal and plant species, possibly sparking her interest in biology. In Grand Lancy and with her young siblings, Mathilde helped raise chickens, ducks, rabbits, and geese and tend the vegetable garden. During
World War II, when even neutral Switzerland experienced food shortages, the vegetable garden and the animals they raised proved essential toward keeping the immediate as well as the extended family fed. During a few wartime summers, she was sent to work on a rural farm where she was fed and housed in return for her labor. In high school, Galland excelled in all subjects but particularly gravitated to science and literature. Although she yearned to study at the university following high school she was discouraged from doing so by her traditional father who preferred that she pursue secretarial training. Despite her father’s objections, she persisted and enrolled at the
University of Geneva in the biology program. In 1948, she married David Danon, a Bulgarian-born man from
Mandatory Palestine whom she met at the University of Geneva where he was enrolled in the School of Medicine. In late 1951, with her infant daughter who was born that same year, she converted to Judaism. Danon had been exiled by the British from Palestine for his involvement in the
Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization fighting against British rule in Palestine prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. In an interview with
Donald Neff, a
Time magazine correspondent, Krim said that she saw him as a “dashing and heroic figure” dedicated to a noble cause that had used terrorism to achieve its ends. While attending the University of Geneva, the couple made trips to the French countryside where they met with former members of the
French Resistance to purchase weapons and explosives. They arranged for those munitions to be shipped to the Zionist resistance group, the Irgun. In 1953, Mathilde became the first woman to receive a PhD in biology from the University of Geneva. Later that year, Mathilde, David and their young daughter relocated to Israel. There, David enlisted as a medical officer with the nascent
Israeli Air Force and Mathilde began research work at the
Weizmann Institute of Science in
Rehovot. The family first settled in military housing on an Air Force base near Rehovot. At the Weizmann Institute, Mathilde worked in the laboratory of Dr.
Leo Sachs on the team that developed the
amniocentesis technique to determine the gender of a fetus. Mathilde and David divorced two years after their arrival in Israel after which she and her daughter moved to live on the campus of the Weizmann Institute. In 1956, Mathilde was introduced to Arthur B. Krim, an American attorney and film executive who was on the Weizmann Institute’s board of directors. As a single young woman, she had been asked by Institute administrators to be Arthur Krim’s date at a welcome dinner for the board members, most of whom were accompanied by their spouses. She had at first declined, fearing she would share few common interests with the American businessman. However, she was persuaded to attend the dinner and, to her surprise, Mathilde soon found herself fascinated and impressed by Arthur Krim due to his charm, his kind heart, his interest in science, and his intellect. Following a long-distance courtship, Mathilde and Arthur were married in New York City in December 1958 after which she and her daughter moved to his Manhattan home. After moving to the U.S., Krim began research at the
Cornell Medical College in the field of
virology, having become interested in the study of
viruses causing cancer. In 1962, she transferred to
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, to further pursue cancer research, where she was later named Director of the Interferon Laboratory. In addition to her full-time scientific research, Krim and her husband raised money for causes such as Israel bonds, the Weizmann Institute, the
Urban League, the
NAACP, the Democratic National Committee, numerous Democratic presidential and down-ballot Democratic candidates, the
Hebrew Arts School, the African American Institute, and further donations for Israel. ==Medical research career, activism and philanthropy==