Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett

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Patrick Blackett in London in 1934

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (born November 18, 1897 in London , † July 13, 1974 ibid) was an English physicist and Nobel Prize winner .

Life

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett was born in London on November 18, 1897. He attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and Osborne and began his military career in 1914 as a cadet. During the First World War he took part in the battles for the Falkland Islands and for Jutland . After the war he resigned as a lieutenant and began studying physics with Ernest Rutherford in Cambridge , completing his BA in 1921. After completing his studies, he stayed - with a break in 1924/25 with James Franck in Göttingen - initially in Cambridge before becoming a professor at Birkbeck College in London in 1933 . As early as 1937 he moved to the University of Manchester , where he took over the chair from Lawrence Bragg , who in turn had taken over the chair from Rutherford.

At the beginning of World War II , Blackett joined the instrumental department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment and in early 1940 became a scientific advisor to Air Marshal Joubert in coastal defense. There he dealt with analytical studies of anti-submarine warfare and built a strong research group. In the same year he became director of the Naval Operational Research of the Admiralty, where he continued to deal with the combat against submarines and other operations of the Navy. In the further course of the year he was assigned to General Pile in the air defense as a scientific advisor, where he established the field of Operations Research for the scientific analysis of staff work. During the German air raids, he was mainly occupied with the provision and use of air defenses.

Patrick Blackett, July 1963 in Copenhagen

In 1953 Blackett was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Physics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Even after his retirement in 1963, he remained at the college, whose physics faculty now bears his name, as professor of physics and as pro-rector. From 1965 to 1970 Blackett was President of the Royal Society .

In 1969 he was raised to a Life Peer for his services as Baron Blackett, of Chelsea in Greater London .

Blackett married Constanza Bayon in 1924 and has a son and a daughter with her. He died on July 13, 1974 in London.

Scientific work

Blackett began after his studies with research at the cloud chamber to deal with in 1924 he scored the first recordings of the conversion of nitrogen in an oxygen - isotope . In 1932, together with Giuseppe Occhialini , he constructed a triggered cloud chamber - through the coincidence of two Geiger-Müller counters above and below the cloud chamber - for researching cosmic rays . In 1933 he confirmed the discovery of the positive electron by Anderson and was also able to prove the existence of showers of positive and negative electrons . Since normal matter contains no positive electrons, he developed the concept of pair creation based on Dirac's theories - the creation of a particle / antiparticle pair by gamma radiation . In addition, they also succeeded in experimentally demonstrating the inverse process, pair annihilation .

After he continued to deal with cosmic rays after the Second World War, after 1948 he dealt with speculations about the isotropy of cosmic rays and the origin of interstellar magnetic fields. These studies, which no longer correspond to current knowledge, led him to the history of the earth's magnetic field and to the then new research area of ​​the magnetization of rocks. His findings and those of his students ( Keith Runcorn , Edward A. Irving ), together with the results of other research groups, provided strong evidence for the theory of continental drift by Alfred Wegener and Alexander Du Toit .

Blackett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1948 "for the further development of the application of Wilson's cloud chamber and the discoveries made with it in the field of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation".

Political engagement and influence on the government

As a student, Blackett made friends with Kingsley Martin (1897–1969), later editor of the New Statesman, and became leftist. Politically, he identified himself as a socialist and often stood up for the Labor Party .

In the late 1940s, Blackett was known for his radical political views; he was of the opinion that Britain should not develop nuclear weapons. Believed to be too leftist to be employed by the Labor government (1945–1951), he returned to academic life.

His internationalism found expression in his strong support for India . There he met Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947 , who asked for his advice on research policy and the needs of the armed forces. For the next 20 years he visited India frequently and advised the government on civil and military matters. These trips deepened his concern for the poor and underprivileged. He believed that the problem could be solved through the application of science and technology, and he used his scientific prestige to try to convince other scientists that one of their first duties was to use their skills to contribute to a life for all people to allow with dignity. Even before development policy became a popular topic, he suggested in a speech to the British Association that Britain should spend one percent of its gross national product on economic improvements in the Third World. He later played a key role in founding the Overseas Development Institute .

Blackett was a leading member of a group of scholars who debated science and research policy when the Labor Party was in opposition. This group became influential when Harold Wilson took over the leadership of the party. Blackett's ideas led to the establishment of the Ministry of Technology as soon as the Labor government under Wilson (1964–1970) came to power. Blackett insisted that one of the priorities must be to revitalize the computer industry. Blackett didn't go straight into politics, but worked as a civil servant for a year . He remained deputy chairman of the advisory body to the minister throughout the reign and was also the minister's personal scientific adviser.

Blackett is also the author of the book Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (1948; American title: Fear, War, and the Bomb , 1949).

Awards and memberships

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 21, 2019 (French).
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 2, 2015 .
  3. ^ Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 9, 2019 .
  4. ^ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Blackett, Patrick, Baron Blacket
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett; Baron Blacket (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English physicist and Nobel Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1974
Place of death London