Bruno Pontecorvo

Bruno Pontecorvo (Pisa, Italy 1913 - Dubna, Russia 1993) was an Italian atomic physicist, early assistant of Enrico Fermi then author of numerous studies in high energy physics, especially on neutrinos. He became notorious, even outside the scientific community, because of his voluntary move to the USSR in 1950, where he continued his research on the decay of the muon and on neutrinos. The prestigious Pontecorvo Prize was instituted in his memory in 1995. Source: http://pontecorvo. ... Source: http://pontecorvo. ... Pisas coat of arms This article is about Pisa in Italy. ... Link title1913 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Dubna is a small city located in central Russia, in the Taldomsky district of Moscow Oblast, approximately 125 km north of Moscow, on the banks of the Volga river. ... 1993 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... Since antiquity, people have tried to understand the behavior of matter: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, and so forth. ... Enrico Fermi in the 1940s. ... Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. ... The neutrino is an elementary particle. ... 1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The moons shadow, as seen in muons 700m below ground at the Soudan 2 detector. ...

Born in a wealthy non-observant Italian Jewish family, at only 18 he was admitted to the Course of Physics held by Enrico Fermi at the University of Rome La Sapienza, becoming one of the closest (and the youngest) assistant of Fermi and one of the so called Via Panisperna boys (as the Fermi's group of scientists is often recalled, after the name of the street where their laboratory was). University of Rome La Sapienza (Università della Sapienza) is the most ancient university of Rome, Italy. ... The Via Panisperna boys were the young scientists led by Enrico Fermi who, in 1934 in Rome, made the famous discovery of slow neutrons that opened the way to the realization of the nuclear reactor and the atomic bomb. ...

In the 1934 he contributed to the famous Fermi's experiment showing the properties of slow neutron that leaded the way to the discovery of the nuclear fission. A thermal neutron is a free neutron with a kinetic energy level of ca. ... Sketch of induced nuclear fission, a neutron (n) strikes a uranium nucleus which splits into similar products (F. P.), and releases more neutrons to continue the process, and energy in the form of gamma and other radiation. ...

In 1936 he moved to Paris working at the laboratory held by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie on effects of collisions of neutrons with protons and to the electromagnetic transitions among isomers. In this period he got influenced by socialist theories to which he remained loyal for the rest of his life. In Paris, in 1938, he joined with Marianne Nordblom, a young student of french literature, having from her in the same year his first son. The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Irène Joliot-Curie Irène Joliot-Curie née Curie (September 12, 1897 – March 17, 1956) was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. ... Frédéric Joliot-Curie Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie né Joliot (March 19, 1900 – August 14, 1958) was a French physicist and Nobel laureate. ... Properties In physics, the neutron is a subatomic particle with no net electric charge and a mass of 939. ... Properties In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ... In chemistry, isomers are molecules with the same chemical formula and often with the same kinds of bonds between atoms, but in which the atoms are arranged differently. ... 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Unable to return to Italy because of 1938's fascist racial discrimination against the Jews, he remained in Paris until the Nazis entered in the city, then he fled with his family to Spain and shortly after to the USA, where he had found an employment for an oil company in Tulsa (Oklahoma). There he developed a technology and an instrument for well logging (that he forgot or did not mind to patent), based on the properties of neutrons that may be considered the first practical application of the Via Panisperna boys' discovery of slow neutrons. The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Downtown Tulsa Tulsa is the second-largest city in Oklahoma. ... Oklahoma is a South Central state of the United States (with strong Southern, Western, and Midwestern influences) and its U.S. postal abbreviation is OK; others abbreviate the states name Okla. ...

In the USA, probably because of his socialist faith that he never hidden, he was not called to participate to the Manhattan Project for the construction of the atomic bomb but in 1943 was asked to participate to theoretical studies in a research center in Canada near Montreal, where he concentrated on cosmic rays, on neutrinos and on the decay of muons. Control panels and operators for calutrons at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ... 1943 is a common year starting on Friday. ... City motto: Concordia Salus (Latin: Well-being through harmony) Province Quebec Mayor Gérald Tremblay Area  - % water 500. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ... The moons shadow, as seen in muons 700m below ground at the Soudan 2 detector. ...

In 1948, after he obtained the British citizenship, he was called by John Cockcroft to contribute to the project of the British atomic bomb and shortly after he was appointed as professor at the University of Liverpool. 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... See also: John Cockroft (politician) Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (May 27, 1897 - September 18, 1967) was a British physicist. ... The University of Liverpool is a university in the city of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. ...

On August 31, 1950, in the middle of a holiday in Italy, after the arrest of Klaus Fuchs, without informing friends or relatives, he abruptly left Rome for Stockholm with his wife and three sons and the day after, as he unveiled many years later, he was helped by soviet agents to enter in the USSR, where for years he was kept completely isolated from the rest of the world. August 31 is the 243rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (244th in leap years), with 122 days remaining, as the final day of August. ... 1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs (b. ... City motto: Senatus Populusque Romanus – SPQR (The Senate and the People of Rome) Founded 21 April 753 BC mythical, 1st millennium BC Region Latium Mayor Walter Veltroni (Democratici di Sinistra) Area  - City Proper  1290 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 2,546,807 almost 4,000,000 1...   Stockholm? is the capital of Sweden, located on the east coast at the entrance of lake Mälaren. ...

His abrupt disappearing caused lot of concern to many of the western intelligence services, mostly to the British and American ones, worried of the escape of atomic secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union after the then recent case of Klaus Fuchs (a german scientist with british citizenship since the 1942 that had participated to the project of the british american bomb and had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.). But as it was pointed out immediately, Pontecorvo had had only limited access to "secret subjects" and even later no allegation of spying or of transferring of secrets to the Soviet has never been made against him. Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs (b. ...

In the USSR was welcome with all the honors and given a number of privileges reserved only to the Soviet nomenclature. He worked until his death in what is now the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, concentrating entirely on theoretical studies on high energy particles and continuing his researches on neutrinos and decay of muons, for which he received first the Stalin Prize in 1953 then the membership to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1958 and two Orders of Lenin. Only in 1955 did he consent to appear in public, at a press conference, where he explained to the world the motivations of his choice to leave the West and work in the USSR. Only many years later, the first time in 1978, was he allowed to travel to Italy. He died in Dubna in 1993, afflicted by Parkinson's disease. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow region, Russia is an international research centre for nuclear sciences, involving around 1000 scientists from eighteen states (mostly former Communist nations). ... The USSR State Prize (Russian:Госуда́рственная пре́мия СССР) was the Soviet Unions highest civilian honour. ... 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Russian Academy of Sciences (Росси́йская Акаде́мия Нау́к) is the national academy of Russia. ... 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Order of Lenin (in Russian, the Orden Lenina (О́рден Ле́нина)), named after the leader of the Russian Revolution, was the highest national order of the Soviet Union. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...

In 1995, in recognition of his scientific merits, the prestigious Pontecorvo Prize has been instituted by the now Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The prize, awarded annually to an individual scientist, recognizes “the most significant investigations in elementary particle physics,” as acknowledged by the international scientific community.

The scientific work of Bruno Pontecorvo is full of formidable intuitions, some of which have represented milestones in modern physics, e.g.:

• the intuition of how to detect anti-neutrinos generated in nuclear reactors (methodology used by Frederick Reines who was awarded for this with the Nobel prize in 1995);
• the prediction that neutrinos associated to electrons where different from those associated to muons (for which experimental verification, another Nobel prize was awarded to J. Steinberger, L. Lederman and M. Schwartz in 1988);
• the assumption that neutrinos, in the vacuum, may convert in another type of neutrinos, property known as neutrino oscillations (for which experimental verification a Nobel prize wad awarded to M. Koshiba in 2002).

Sir Edward Appletons medal Photographs of Nobel Prize Medals. ... 1995 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1988 is a leap year starting on a Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The solar neutrino problem was a major discrepancy between measurements of the neutrinos flowing through the Earth and theoretical models of the solar interior, lasting from the mid-1960s to about 2002. ... 2002(MMII) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Bruno Pontecorvo's Writings (to be completed):

• Neutron Well Logging - A New Geological Method Based on Nuclear Physics, Oil and Gas Journal, 1941, vol.40, p.32-33.1942.

Books about Bruno Pontecorvo

• M. Mafai - Il lungo freddo: Storia di Bruno Pontecorvo, lo scienziato che scelse l'URSS - Milano, 1992

External links

• Biography / Scientific Works / Popular Articles / About B. Pontecorvo / Photoalbum (in english and russian)
• 1950's news of Pontecorvo's disappearing from BBC archive
• CONSCIENCE, ARROGATION AND THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, Volume 47, No. 4, July/August 1994