Bruno Rossi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bruno Rossi

Bruno Benedetto Rossi (born April 13, 1905 in Venice , † November 21, 1993 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an Italian astrophysicist and elementary particle physicist .

Life

Rossi received his doctorate at the University of Bologna and was from 1928 assistant at the University of Florence . In 1932 he became a professor of experimental physics at the University of Padua . As a Jew, he lost his professorship in 1938 and went to the USA via Copenhagen and Manchester , where he was a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago in 1939 . In 1942 he became an associate professor at Cornell University . During World War II, he worked on radar development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Radiation Lab and later on the nuclear weapons program in Los Alamos (he co-led the detector development group). In 1946 he became a professor at MIT, where he again studied cosmic rays and in the late 1950s was a pioneer of rocket experiments, e.g. B. to measure the interplanetary plasma and (as a consultant to American Science and Engineering Inc.) discovered the first X-ray source outside the solar system (Scorpio X-1). In 1965 he became an institute professor at MIT. In 1970 he retired there and taught at the University of Palermo from 1974 to 1980 . Kenneth Greisen is one of his PhD students .

plant

Bruno Rossi was a pioneer in the research of cosmic rays in the 1930s and was one of the first to detect cosmic X-rays with rocket experiments .

In 1939 he was the first to demonstrate the decay of the muon at the University of Chicago and measured (at Cornell University) its mean lifespan.

Rossi also developed a number of electronic techniques in experimental physics, e.g. B. 1930 circuits for coincidence observation, 1942 the " Time to Amplitude Converter " and 1943 in Los Alamos with Hans H. Staub the "Fast Ionization Chamber".

Honors and Membership

He was honorary doctorate from Palermo, La Paz, Durham and Chicago and honorary member of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (1971)

The American Astronomical Society awards him the Bruno Rossi Prize for High Energy Astrophysics in his honor . A chair at MIT is named after him.

The X-ray satellite Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer of NASA is named after him. In 2012 the asteroid (17649) Brunorossi was named after him.

literature

Essays
Monographs
  • Moments in the Life of a Scientist ("Momenti nella vita di uno scienziato", 1987). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, ISBN 0-521-36439-6 ( autobiography ).
  • High energy particles . Prentice Hall, New York 1952.
  • Cosmic Rays . McGraw Hill, New York 1964.
  • Introduction to the Physics of Space . McGraw Hill, New York 1970 (with Stanislaw Olbert).
  • Optics . Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1957.
  • Alberto Bonetti (Ed.): Cosmic ray, particle and astroparticle physics. A conference in honor of Giuseppe Occhialini , Bruno Pontecorvo and Bruno Rossi; Florence, 11.-13. September 1995 (Atti dei convegni Lincei; vol. 133). Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 1997 (in English and Italian).

Web links

Commons : Bruno Rossi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry of Bruno Rossi at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 23, 2016.
  2. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter R. (PDF; 508 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 12, 2018 .
  3. ^ Member History: Bruno B. Rossi. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 6, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 79103
personal data
SURNAME Rossi, Bruno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rossi, Bruno Benedetto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian astrophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Venice
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1993
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts