Marietta BlauBorn 29 Apr 1894; died 27 Jan 1970 at age 75.Austrian nuclear physicist who began as a strong student in mathematics and physics at school, and studied physics at university, where she wrote her thesis on the absorption of gamma rays (1919). At first, she took a job (1921) with a manufacturer of x-ray tubes in Berlin. By 1923, she progressed to researching radioactivity with the Institut für Radiumforschung back in Vienna. There she developed the photographic emulsion technique for the study of nuclear disintegration caused by cosmic rays, and contributed to development of photomultiplier tubes. Blau was first to use nuclear emulsions to detect neutrons by observing recoil protons. Albert Einstein recognized her as a very capable experimental physicist, and after 1938 when she fled the rise of the Nazis, Einstein helped her career continue in Mexico City and then the U.S.« |
