Hertha Wambacher

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hertha Wambacher (born March 9, 1903 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † April 25, 1950 there ) was an Austrian physicist .

After graduating from the girls' high school of the Association for Extended Women's Education ( Rahlgasse ) in 1922, Hertha Wambacher studied chemistry at the University of Vienna , later physics.

Wambacher's dissertation at the 2nd Physics Institute was supervised by Marietta Blau , with whom Wambacher also worked after her doctorate in 1932. The cooperation between the two women related to the photographic method of detecting ionizing particles. For their methodological investigations at the Institute for Radium Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Blau and Wambacher received the Haitinger Prize in 1936 and the Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937 . Also in 1937, working together, the two discovered "smashing stars" in photo plates that had been exposed to cosmic radiation at an altitude of 2300 m, which are star-shaped particle traces from nuclear reactions ( spallation events ) of the particles of cosmic radiation with nuclei of the photographic emulsion.

After Blau had to leave the Vienna Radium Institute in 1938, Hertha Wambacher continued to work on the identification of particles from the nuclear reactions of cosmic rays with the components of the photographic emulsion. She completed her habilitation with this work in 1940 and taught at the University of Vienna. In 1945 Wambacher, who claims to have been a member of the NSDAP since 1934, was removed from the University of Vienna. She was deported to Russia and is said to have only returned from there in 1946. She got cancer, but still worked in a research laboratory in Vienna.

Wambacher succumbed to cancer on April 25, 1950.

literature

  • Robert Rosner & Brigitte Strohmaier (Eds.): Marietta Blau. Stars of shattering. Biography of a pioneer of modern particle physics. Böhlau, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-205-77088-9 (series: Contributions to the history of science and science research; 3)
  • Brigitte Strohmaier & Robert Rosner: Marietta Blau. Stars of Disintegration. Biography of a Pioneer of Particle Physics. Ariadne, Riverside, California, 2006 ISBN 978-1-57241-147-0
  • Elke Mühlleitner: Wambacher, Hertha. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 786–788.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wambacher, Hertha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1950
Place of death Vienna