Her scientific career began at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Silicate Research and ended with her early retirement. Luise Holzapfel researched organic silicic acid compounds and the dust lung disease silicosis.

Luise Holzapfel was born on 14 March 1900 in Höxter an der Weser and grew up in a middle-class family of lawyers. Her father Wilhelm Holzapfel was a government councillor, her mother Elsa did not pursue a profession. Holzapfel only completed her A-levels, which was unusual for young women at the time, at the age of 29 at an evening school in Berlin. From 1929 to 1934, she studied chemistry, physics, technology and economics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In October 1936, she was the first woman to be awarded a doctorate at the new Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Her thesis was entitled "On the photochemical combustion of carbon oxide".

In 1939, Holzapfel was offered a position as a research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Silicate Research in Berlin-Dahlem. She habilitated there in 1943 with a thesis on "Organic silicic acid compounds". The following year she was appointed lecturer and from 1945 she headed a department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Silicate Research, where she continued to work on organic silica compounds. With the transfer of the West German institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society to the Max Planck Society, Holzapfel's department became a branch of the Würzburg Max Planck Institute for Silicate Research in 1952, but had to close ten years later for cost reasons. Holzapfel took early retirement in 1963.

In addition to her fundamental contributions to organic silicon compounds, Holzapfel made a name for herself as a researcher into silicosis, quartz dust lung, which is now recognised as an occupational disease. The "Nature and Technology" association based in her native town of Höxter chose the silicate researcher as the namesake for its MINT competition (MINT stands for mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology), in which children and young people can win the Luise Holzapfel Prize.

Luise Holzapfel died after a serious illness on 21 September 1963 in Berlin.

Source
A. Vogt, Berlinische Monatsschrift 9, 2000, 3, p. 80