"Evolution is in the nature of things"

This sentence was enunciated by the first woman scientist in Albania, Sabiha Kasimati, according to the testimony of her cellmate. The communist regime arrested her on 20 February 1951 and a few days later was executed without trial and thrown into a common pit together with 21 other intellectuals.

Her scientific monograph "Fishes of Albania" was the first of its kind in Albania. Shortly before her execution its publication immediately disappeared; after the fall of communism the original diploma was found in the Faculty of Biological Sciences in Turin, where she studied from 1936-41, but the book is still lost.