Hertha Wambacher (9 March 1903 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

– 25 April 1950 in Vienna) was an Austrian physicist.

Education

After having obtained the general certificate of education from the girls' high school run by the Association for the Extended Education of Women in 1922, she studied first chemistry, then physics at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

Work with Marietta Blau

Wambacher's dissertation at the 2nd Physics Institute was supervised by

Marietta Blau Marietta Blau (29 April 1894 – 27 January 1970) was an Austrian physicist credited with developing photographic nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high-energy nuclear particles and events, significantly ad ...

, with whom Wambacher continued to collaborate also after her Ph.D. graduation in 1932. The cooperation of the two women referred to the photographic method of detecting ionizing particles. For their methodical studies at the Institute for Radium Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Blau and Wambacher received the

Lieben Prize The Ignaz Lieben Prize, named after the Austrian banker , is an annual Austrian award made by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to young scientists working in the fields of molecular biology, chemistry, or physics. Biography The Ignaz Lieben Pri ...

of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937. Also in 1937, Blau and Wambacher jointly discovered "disintegration stars" in photographic plates that had been exposed to

cosmic radiation Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

at an altitude of 2300 m above sea level. These stars are the patterns of particle tracks from nuclear reactions ( spallation events) of cosmic-ray particles with nuclei of the photographic emulsion.

Academic career and further research

After Blau had to leave Austria in 1938, Hertha Wambacher continued working on the identification of particles from nuclear reactions of cosmic rays with the emulsion constituents. With this work, she obtained her university teaching certification in 1940. She taught classes at the University of Vienna.

Nazism, post-war life

In 1945, Wambacher who – according to her own words – had belonged to the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

since 1934, was removed from the University of Vienna. She was detained in Russia and is said to have returned only in 1946. She contracted cancer, but was still able to work in a research laboratory in Vienna.

Death

Wambacher died from cancer on 25 April 1950.

Literature

* Robert Rosner & Brigitte Strohmaier (eds.): ''Marietta Blau – Sterne der Zertrümmerung. Biographie einer Wegbereiterin der modernen Teilchenphysik''. Böhlau, Vienna 2003, (in German) * Brigitte Strohmaier & Robert Rosner: ''Marietta Blau – Stars of Disintegration. Biography of a pioneer of particle physics''. Ariadne, Riverside, California 2006,

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wambacher, Hertha 1903 births 1950 deaths Austrian physicists Austrian women physicists Scientists from Vienna Deaths from cancer in Austria 20th-century women scientists Cosmic ray physicists University of Vienna alumni