Some days ago, Backreaction tagged me to write an historical meme. Well, what I will do here is not a writing of my own, but I will simply and shamelessly cut and paste from Wikipedia. My time has been quite short for blogging these days… Also, I have decided not to tag someone else… so from my part the tagging stops here!
The historical figure that I have chosen is the Brazilian physicist César Lattes (1924-2005). For the meme, I need to list 7 interesting things about my chosen historical figure. Here they are:
1) Lattes was born to a family of Italian Jewish immigrants in Curitiba, Southern Brazil.
2) At the age of 23, he was one of the founders of the Brazilian Center of Physical Research (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas) in Rio de Janeiro.
3) From 1947 to 1948, Lattes launched on his main research line, by studying cosmic rays, which were discovered in 1932 by American physicist Carl David Anderson. He visited a weather station on top of the 5,200-meter high Chacaltaya mountain in Bolivia, using photographic plates to register the rays. Traveling to England with his teacher Occhialini, Lattes went to work at the H. H. Wills Laboratory of the University of Bristol, directed by Cecil Frank Powell (1903-1969). After improving on the nuclear emulsion used by Powell, by asking Ilford Co. to add more boron to it, in 1947, he made with them his great experimental discovery, that of a new atomic particle, the pi meson (or pion), which disintegrates into a new kind of particle, the mu meson. Brash young Lattes then proceeded to write a paper for Nature magazine without bothering to ask for Powell’s consent. In the same year, he was responsible for calculating the new particle’s mass, a painstaking job. A year later, working with Eugene Gardner (1913-1950) at the University of California, Berkeley, Lattes was able to detect the artificial production of pion particles in the lab’s cyclotron, by bombarding carbon atoms with alpha particles. He was 24 years old.
4) Although he was the main researcher and the first author of the historical Nature article describing the meson pi, Cecil Powell alone was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1950 for “his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method”. The reason for this apparent neglect is that the Nobel Committee policy until 1960 was to give the award to the research group head, only. [See here for a similar situation in the Nobel 2007 awards].
5) In 1969, he and his group discovered the mass of the so-called fire balls, a phenomenon induced by naturally occurring high-energy collisions, and which was detected by means of special lead-chamber nuclear emulsion plates invented by him, and placed at the Chacaltaya peak of the Bolivian Andes.
6) His colleagues, who also became important Brazilian scientists, were Oscar Sala, Mário Schenberg, Roberto Salmeron, Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos and Jayme Tiomno.
7) Lattes is one of the most distinguished and honored Brazilian physicists, and his work was fundamental for the development of atomic physics. He was also a great scientific leader of Brazilian Physics and was one of the main personalities behind the creation of the important Brazilian National Research Council (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). He figures as one of the few Brazilians in Isaac Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, as well as in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Update: Here is a link to the 1947 paper by Lattes in Nature [thanks to Stefan/Backreaction].
Dear Christine,
very interesting! I haven’t heard of him before… or, actually, I should say, I hadn’t taken note of him before. Since he was on of the discoverers of the pion, that reminds me that I had come across his name on the nature physics portal some time ago, here: The discovery of the pion, there is even a PDF of the Nature paper available there.
Good to konw that he is from Brazil and has such an interesting story!
Thank you a lot,
Stefan
I wonder what went through the minds of the authors of the paper as the Nobel prize was announced. Was Powell very much abashed and had trouble talking to Lattes? Was Lattes, if not furious, had several nights of insomnia?
I am asking about the general situation of course, when great scientists achieve recognition (or when they don’t), are they still entirely human or have they transcended that level by the mere joy and pride in their discovery alone?
Well, I give below a translation of an excerpt of his last interview in 2005 (taken from this site).
Question: You were 22 years old when demonstrated the existence of the pion. How was the notice that a young discovers something so important was received?
CL: Among the scientists, the reception was normal. At the time, other groups were making similar research, then it was not a surprise. Stronger was the attention of the European and Brazilian press. The notice went to the first page of some newspapers.
Question: Do you think that the fact of being Brazilian contributed so that another researcher gained the Physics Nobel in the research where you have participated?
CL: Although the judge commission was formed by Englishmen, I believe that it was not my nationality that weighted in the decision of the winner. As much in the discovery of pion, in 1946, as in its artificial creation, in 1948, I had the contribution of the Giuseppe Occhialini. He was the one who should have received the prize. And, in 1950, who took the prize was the Cecil Powell, who also participated in the work. But forget about this. These huge prizes do not help science.
“These huge prizes do not help science”. Wow, that is pretty incredible. *humbled*