Marietta Blau
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Marietta Blau (* 29 April 1894 in Vienna, † 27 January 1970 in Vienna) was an Austrian physicist. After finishing school, she studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna from 1914 to 1918.
From 1919 to 1923, Blau held several positions in industrial and University research institutions in Austria and Germany. From 1923 on, she worked as an unpaid scientist at the Institute for Radium Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. A stipend by the Austrian Association of female Academics made it possible for her to do research also in Göttingen and Paris (1932/1933).
In her Vienna years, Blau's main interest was the development of the photographic method of particle identification. It was her greatest success when she, together with her former student, Herta Wambacher, discovered "Stars of Disintegration", i.e, spallation events, in photographic plates that had been exposed to cosmic radiation at a height of 2300 m above sea level. For this work, she received the Lieben prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937.
Because of her Jewish descent, Blau had to leave Austria in 1938, and this fact produced a severe break in her scientific career. She first went to Oslo. Then, through the intercession of Albert Einstein, she obtained a teaching position at the Polytechnic Institute in Mexico city. But since conditions in Mexico made research extremely difficult for her, she seized an opportunity to move to the United States in 1944.
In the United States, Blau worked until 1960 in industry, but also at Columbia University and the University of Miami.
In 1960, Blau returned to Austria, resumed her scientific work at the Institute for Radium Research - again without pay. She supervised dissertations carried out in cooperation with CERN. In 1962, she received the Schrödinger prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, but an attempt to make her also a corresponding member of the Academy was not successful.
Marietta Blau died from cancer in 1970, due to her unprotected handling of radioactive substances over many years. No obituary appeared in any scientific publication.
In 1947, Cecil Powell received the Nobel prize for discovering the pion by use of the photographic method. He chose this method for his work in nuclear physics when Walter Heitler had told him about the method and about the pioneering work of Blau and Wambacher.
[edit] Literature
- Robert Rosner, Brigitte Strohmaier (ed.): Marietta Blau, Stars of Disintegration. A biography of a pioneer of modern particle physics. Böhlau, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3205-77088-9 (in German)
[edit] Weblinks
- Works by and about Marietta Blau in the German National Library catalogue
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