Marietta Blau: Pioneer of Photographic Nuclear Emulsions and Particle Physics

摘要

During the 1920s and 1930s, Viennese physicist Marietta Blau (1894–1970) pioneered the use of photographic methods for imaging high-energy nuclear particles and events. In 1937 she and Hertha Wambacher discovered “disintegration stars” – the tracks of massive nuclear disintegrations – in emulsions exposed to cosmic radiation. This discovery launched the field of particle physics, but Blau’s contributions were underrecognized and she herself was nearly forgotten. I trace Blau’s career at the Institut für Radiumforschung in Vienna and the causes of this “forgetting,” including her forced emigration from Austria in 1938, the behavior of her colleagues in Vienna during and after the National Socialist period, and the flawed Nobel decision process that excluded her from a Nobel Prize.