Research achievements of women in the past and present are made visible in an exhibition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), which opened yesterday at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck. It will be on display until the end of October.
Do you know Marietta Blau? She was one of the first women in Austria to study physics and mathematics. She researched radioactivity at the University of Vienna and at the Institute for Radium Research at the Academy of Sciences. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize five times. Unsuccessfully. As a Jew, Marietta Blau was forced to emigrate in 1938. She died in Vienna in 1970. No obituary appeared in any scientific journal.
“Science flourishes by diversity”
Marietta Blau and other early female researchers such as the zoologist Leonore Brecher and the archaeologists Maria Junker and Lisbeth Schäfer are honored in the exhibition “Discovering female researchers: Women at the Academy of Sciences”, which is on display at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Innsbruck until October 31, 2024.
On Thursday afternoon, the exhibition was opened by ÖAW Vice President Christiane Wendehorst via video message: “The Academy is no longer a male-dominated society - and that's a good thing. Science flourishes by diversity. However, the research achievements of women in the past and present are still under-appreciated. We want to counter this with this exhibition and make women in science visible. With this in mind, we invite all visitors to the exhibition to discover female researchers whose scientific work they may not yet be familiar with, or only to a limited extent.” The exhibition was designed by historian and ÖAW member Brigitte Mazohl and ÖAW historian Sandra Klos, who presented and explained the exhibition to the numerous guests at the opening.