Hildred Blewett

Myrtle Hildred Blewett (born Myrtle Hildred Hunt; 28 May 1911 – 13 June 2004) was a Canadian accelerator physicist. 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. 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. At CERN, Blewett worked in the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR). She ran the finances of that division and was secretary of the ISR Committee (ISRC).

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