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

Early life and education

Blewett was born on 28 May 1911 in Toronto, Ontario. 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.

Career

Blewett started her career at General Electric, where she devised a technique for controlling smoke pollution from factory chimneys in the 1940s. She and her husband John Blewett were part of the initial team at Brookhaven National Laboratory. 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. She then worked at Argonne National Laboratory before finally joining CERN in 1969.

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. 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.

Personal life

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

References

1. ^ "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. ^ 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

• Blewett, Hildred (November 1969). "Ten years ago". CERN Courier. 9 (11): 331–335.
• Fidecaro, Maria; Sutton, Christine (19 July 2011). "Hildred Blewett: a life with particle accelerators". Physics Today. 6 (2): 28–32. doi:10.1063/1.3061155. ISSN 0031-9228.

• 1911 births
• 2004 deaths
• 20th-century Canadian physicists
• People associated with CERN
• Canadian women physicists
• 20th-century Canadian women scientists