Physicist Marietta Blau was born #OTD in 1894. She pioneered the use of nuclear emulsion plates for particle detection, and discovered "disintegration stars" produced by cosmic rays interacting with nuclei in the plates.
Photo: Agnes Rodhe

Both Schrödinger & Thirring nominated Blau for the Nobel Prize. Schrödinger nominated Blau in 1950, but the stridently sexist Nobel Committee ignored her work. Instead they awarded the prize to Cecil Powell. His work was based on research by Blau and her student Hertha Wambacher.

It was an obvious case of the Nobel Committee withholding the prize from a woman so they could award it to a man who did something with the techniques she developed. The Committee intentionally downplayed Blau's contributions. Powell didn't even cite her in his Nobel lecture.

Powell mentions photographic emulsions no fewer than eight times in his Nobel lecture; seven of his eight figures are tracks from emulsion plates. He provides twelve citations, but they do not include Blau or Wambacher. He does not even mention them in passing.

As a Jew, Blau was forced to flee after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. But as a woman, it was nearly impossible for her to find a salaried position anywhere. Eventually Einstein, who greatly admired her work, helped her obtain a position in Mexico.

Blau would join the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1944, and eventually found an academic post at the University of Miami.

By the late 1960s her eyesight was failing –– a result of her work with radioactivity. She couldn't afford the surgery she needed in the US, so she returned to Vienna. Marietta Blau passed away in an ICU there in 1970.

There's a nice entry on Blau, written by @mrentetz, at the @jwaonline. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/blau-marietta