Giuseppe Occhialini | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1907-12-05)5 December 1907 |
| Died | 30 December 1993(1993-12-30) (aged 86) Paris, France |
| Known for | |
| Scientific career | |
| Doctoral advisor | Bruno Rossi |
_P.S._Occhialini_(1907%25E2%2580%25931993)_and_Patrick_M.S._Blackett_(1897%25E2%2580%25931974)_in_1932_or_1933.png)
Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao "Beppo" OcchialiniForMemRS[1] (Italian pronunciation:[dʒuˈzɛppeokkjaˈliːni]; 5 December 1907 – 30 December 1993) was an Italianphysicist who contributed to the discovery of thepion or pi-meson decay in 1947 withCésar Lattes andCecil Frank Powell, the latter winning theNobel Prize in Physics for this work. At the time of this discovery, they were all working at the H. H. Wills Laboratory of theUniversity of Bristol.
The X-ray satellite SAX was namedBeppoSAX in his honour after its launch in 1996.
His father was the physicist Raffaele Augusto Occhialini (1878–1951), a pioneer in the fields of spectroscopy and electronics theory. Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao Occhialini graduated at Florence in 1929. In 1932, he collaborated in the discovery of the positron in cosmic rays at theCavendish Laboratory ofCambridge, under the leadership ofPatrick Blackett, using cloud chambers.
He returned in Italy in 1934, where he suffered from the political climate generated byfascism. Thus, from 1937 to 1944, following an invitation byGleb Wataghin, he worked at the Institute of Physics of theUniversity of São Paulo, inBrazil.
In 1944 he returned to England, working at the Wills Physics Laboratory in Bristol, where he studied cosmic rays.In 1947, while in Bristol, he contributed to the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in collaboration withCésar Lattes,Cecil Frank Powell andHugh Muirhead. The discovery was made using the technology of the tracks on specialized photographic emulsions. Powell won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1950, in large part for this work.[2]
He returned to Italy in 1950, teaching first inGenoa and then in the physics department at theUniversity of Milan in 1952.
He was a protagonist in cosmic ray research with the nuclear utilization of photographic emulsions exposed to high energy cosmic radiation, work which culminated in 1954 with the European G-Stack collaboration, that focused on the decay products of thekaons. Later on with the coming of particle accelerators, Occhialini explored that new field of research. He also made outstanding contributions to space physics, importantly contributing to the foundation of theEuropean Space Agency.[3]
Beppo Occhialini was an avid mountain climber. During WW II, staying inBrazil, then a country hostile toItaly, he became an authorized alpine guide in theParque Nacional do Itatiaia, where there is a peak named "Pico Occhialini".
