MISSED IMAGE Luise Herzberg (1906–1971)

Luise Herzberg, née Oettinger (1906–1971), was a physicist and spectroscopist. She studied physics in Göttingen, carried out her doctoral research at the TH Darmstadt and received her doctorate from the University of Frankfurt in 1933 with a study of the beryllium oxide molecule. That same year she was barred from working because she was Jewish. In 1935 she and her husband Gerhard Herzberg emigrated to Canada. After the family moved to Ottawa in 1948, she returned to research, first at the Dominion Observatory and later at the Radio Physics Laboratory at Shirley Bay. While Gerhard Herzberg received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1971, her own scientific work has remained largely unknown.

As part of Versäumte Bilder (Missing Pictures), Gesine Born has created two portraits of Luise Herzberg, in cooperation with the German Embassy in Ottawa, the National Research Council Canada (NRC) and the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR). The historical research was carried out with Steven Leclair, archivist at the NRC, drawing on the NRC Archives.

The portraits are AI-generated and labelled [AI]. They do not claim to show how Luise Herzberg looked. They open a space to ask why so few images of her exist and what her work contributed. The official portrait will be shown at the German Embassy in Ottawa from 7 October 2026. A second, smaller portrait of Luise Herzberg in the laboratory will find its place in the Herzberg Museum.