Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt (born 4 May 1875) was an Austrian physicist, who conducted research on radioactivity.

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt
Born
Cäcilia Wendt

(1875-05-04)4 May 1875
NationalityAustrian
Alma materUniversity of Vienna (1900)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Vienna

Early life and education

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She was born Cäcilia Wendt on 4 May 1875 in Troppau, Silesia.[1] She studied at the University of Vienna from 1896 to 1900, where she published work on rational values of trigonometric functions,[2] receiving a doctoral degree for research on special functions of importance in mathematical physics.[1][3][4]

Career

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In 1900, she became the first woman to hold the position of probationary teacher at Vienna's gymnasium for young women (gymnasiale Mädchenschule).[3] She worked at the University of Vienna's Physical Institute, investigating how the radiation produced by radium created electrical conductivity in dielectric materials (petroleum ether and vaseline oil). She then obtained the mobility of the resulting ions.[5][6][7] At the institute, she was a research collaborator with its director, Egon von Schweidler.[1]

In 1909, she and Maria Sadzewicz were the only two women in Austria to publish physics papers; at this time, only about 1% of physicists were women.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Creese, Mary R. S.; Creese, Thomas M. (2004). Ladies in the Laboratory II: West European Women in Science, 1800-1900 : A Survey of Their Contributions to Research. ISBN 9780810849792.
  2. ^ Wendt, Cäcilie (1899). "Note über die Kreisfunctionen". Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (in German). 10 (1): 97–100. doi:10.1007/BF01695049. ISSN 0026-9255. S2CID 121649061.
  3. ^ a b Good, David F.; Grandner, Margarete; Maynes, Mary Jo (1996). Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Berghahn Books. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-57181-045-8.
  4. ^ Wendt, Cäcilie (1900). "Eine Verallgemeinerung des Additionstheoremes der Bessel'schen Functionen erster Art". Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (in German). 11 (1): 125–131. doi:10.1007/BF01832513. ISSN 0026-9255. S2CID 120601933.
  5. ^ Böhm-Wendt, Cäcilia; Schweidler, Egon (1909). "Über die spezifische Geschwindigkeit der Ionen in flüssigen Dielektrikas". Physikalische Zeitschrift. 10: 379–382.
  6. ^ Rutherford, Ernest (1913). Radioactive Substances and Their Radiations. Cambridge University Press. p. 326.
  7. ^ Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy (16 December 2003). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-96342-2.
  8. ^ Wróblewski, A. K. (2010). "Physics 1909: A Portrait of the Field Hundred Years Ago". Acta Physica Polonica B. 41 (2): 229.