Oreste Piccioni

Thought plaque for Piccioni in Via Colombo in Grosseto .

Oreste Piccioni (born October 24, 1915 in Siena , † April 13, 2002 in Rancho Santa Fe , California ) was an Italian physicist .

Piccioni attended the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 1934 , but went to Rome that same year to study with Enrico Fermi at La Sapienza University, where he received his doctorate in 1938. Subsequently he dealt with the composition of cosmic rays and especially the lifespan of pions . Piccioni's working group was also able to prove that these mesons are not the carriers of the strong interaction , as was thought at the time. During World War II , Piccioni tried to escape from the Nazis but was captured and arrested. However, a friend was able to free him by bribing him, after which he built radios for the Italian underground .

In 1946 he moved to the United States , where he was appointed to MIT for his work on cosmic rays , and from 1948 he worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory . In 1956 he was involved in the discovery of the antineutron . With Abraham Pais he developed a theory about the kaons .

In 1960 he received a professorship at the University of California, San Diego , where he founded a research group for particle physics .

Best known in Piccioni, however, for an incident that was unique in the history of science until then. In 1954 he discussed with Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain the technical possibilities of detecting the antiproton with the help of the bevatron . In 1959, Segrè and Chamberlain received the Nobel Prize in Physics , but never mentioned Piccioni, which the latter resented them very much. Segrè promised to help Piccioni with his naturalization, which was not so easy because of Piccioni's political views. In any case, the process dragged on. In 1972, he brought a lawsuit against the two for $ 125,000 in damages, which was dismissed due to the statute of limitations. However, the court agreed with him in principle. Involving a court on science issues was a taboo break and Piccioni made himself unpopular in physicist circles, which ultimately led to his move to San Diego. In 1986 he retired, and in 1999 he was awarded the Matteucci Medal .

literature

• Heinrich Zankl: Nobel Prizes. Explosive affairs, controversial decisions . Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2005, ISBN 3-527-31182-3

Web links

• F. Bassani: "I legami scientifici di Oreste Piccioni con la Società italiana di fisica" . In: Rend. F sharp. Acc. Lincei . 2004/9, p. 373. (PDF file; 4.61 MB)