Myrtle Hildred Blewett (born Myrtle Hildred Hunt; 28 May 1911 – 13 June 2004) was a Canadian accelerator physicist.[1]

M. Hildred Blewett
Born
Myrtle Hildred Hunt

(1911-05-28)28 May 1911
Died13 June 2004(2004-06-13) (aged 93)
Education
SpouseJohn P. Blewett
Scientific career
FieldsAccelerator physics
Institutions
Doctoral advisorHans Bethe

Early life and education

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Blewett was born on 28 May 1911 in Toronto, Ontario.[2] She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1935 with a BA in physics and mathematics. In 1938, Blewett joined Cornell University as a graduate student, with Hans Bethe as her thesis supervisor. However, due to the United States entrance to the second world war, her thesis work remained incomplete.[3]

Career

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Blewett started her career at General Electric, where she devised a technique for controlling smoke pollution from factory chimneys in the 1940s.[1] She and her husband John Blewett were part of the initial team at Brookhaven National Laboratory.[4] In the early 1950s Blewett contributed to the design of CERN’s first high-energy accelerator, the Proton Synchrotron, while also working on a similar machine proposed for Brookhaven.[5] She then worked at Argonne National Laboratory before finally joining CERN in 1969.[3]

Following her retirement from CERN in 1977, Blewett retired to Vancouver. She died on 13 June 2004, and was commemorated by CERN colleagues Maria Fidecaro and Christine Sutton.[3] She left much of her estate to the American Physical Society, founding the Blewett Scholarship for women physicists who return to the field after a break in their careers.[1]

Personal life

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Blewett married John Blewett in 1936, who was also an accelerator physicist, and later divorced in 1960s.

References

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  1. ^ a b c "M. Hildred Blewett". American Physical Society. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
  2. ^ Wang, Jessica (1999). American science in an age of anxiety : scientists, anticommunism, and the cold war. Chapel Hill (N.C.): University of North Carolina press. pp. 94–99. ISBN 9780807847497.
  3. ^ a b c Fidecaro, Maria; Sutton, Christine (July 2011). "Hildred Blewett: a life with particle accelerators". CERN Courier. 51 (6): 35–37.
  4. ^ Jayakumar, Raghavan (2012). Particle accelerators, colliders, and the story of high energy physics charming the cosmic snake. Berlin: Springer. p. 99. ISBN 9783642220647.
  5. ^ Blewett, Hildred (1969), "Ten years ago: ...some personal reminiscences", CERN Courier, vol. 9, no. 11, Geneva: CERN, pp. 331–337, retrieved 2024-04-03

Further reading

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