Owen Chamberlain

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Owen Chamberlain (born July 10, 1920 in San Francisco , † February 28, 2006 in Berkeley ) was an American physicist and Nobel Prize winner .

Life

Owen Chamberlain was born in 1920 to radiologist W. Edward Chamberlain and his wife Genevieve Lucinda Owen .

Chamberlain began studying physics at the University of California after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1941 . He had to interrupt his studies because the USA entered the war in World War II and from 1942 worked under Emilio Segrè in the Manhattan project . After the end of the war and the completion of the project, he resumed his studies in 1946. He found support above all from Enrico Fermi . Finally, in 1949, he completed his doctorate in physics with a thesis on "Scattering of slow neutrons in liquids" and decided to stay at the University of California to work as a lecturer; In 1958 he was appointed professor. In 1959 he was a Loeb Lecturer at Harvard for a year .

Chamberlain was married three times, to Beatrice Babette Copper († 1988), June Steingart Greenfield († 1991) and Senta Pugh Gaiser . He has three daughters and a son from his first marriage.

plant

During the Manhattan project, Chamberlain investigated the core cross-sections for medium-energy neutrons and the spontaneous fission of heavy elements.

Chamberlain conducted extensive studies on proton-proton scattering, with the studies on polarization effects and triple scattering being particularly important. In 1955 he was together with Emilio Segrè, Dr. Wiegand and Dr. Ypsilantis involved in the discovery of the antiproton - in 1959 he and Emilio Gino Segrè were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for their discovery of the antiproton ”.

In the following years, together with his colleagues, he investigated the interaction of antiprotons with hydrogen , deuterium and other light elements and was also able to generate antineutrons with the help of antiprotons. In 1960, together with Carson Jeffries and Gilbert Shapiro, he used polarized proton targets for the first time to investigate the spin dependence of a large number of high-energy processes. a. Investigations on the scattering of pi mesons and protons on polarized protons, determined the parity of hyperons, tested the T symmetry in electron-proton scattering.

Awards and honors

In 1960 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1974 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Web links

Commons : Owen Chamberlain  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member Directory: Owen Chamberlain. National Academy of Sciences, accessed December 17, 2015 (Biographical Memoir by Herbert Steiner).
  2. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950–1999. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, accessed December 17, 2015 (PDF file).
personal data
SURNAME Chamberlain, Owen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and Nobel Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco , California
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 2006
Place of death Berkeley , California