Bruno Pontecorvo

Bruno Pontecorvo

Bruno Pontecorvo russian: Бруно Понтекорво (Marina di Pisa, Italy, August 22, 1913 - Dubna, Russia, September 24, 1993) was an Italian-born atomic physicist, an early assistant of Enrico Fermi and then the 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.

Biography

Pontecorvo was born in Pisa into 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) assistants of Fermi and one of the so-called Via Panisperna boys (as Fermi's group of scientists is often called, after the name of the street where their laboratory was situated).

In 1934 he contributed to Fermi's famous experiment showing the properties of slow neutrons that led the way to the discovery of nuclear fission.

In 1936 he moved to Paris to work in the laboratory of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie on the effects of collisions of neutrons with protons and on the electromagnetic transitions among isomers. During this period he was influenced by the ideas of socialism to which he remained loyal for the rest of his life. In Paris, in 1938, he formed a relationship with Marianne Nordblom, a young student of French Literature, and their first son was born during that year.

Pontecorvo was unable to return to Italy because of the fascist regime's racial discrimination against the Jews. He remained in Paris until the Nazis entered the city, then fled with his family to Spain and shortly after to the USA, where he had found employment with an oil company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While at the oil company he developed a technology and an instrument for "well logging", based on the properties of neutrons. This technology may be considered the first practical application of the "Via Panisperna boys' "discovery of slow neutrons.

He was not called upon to participate in the Manhattan Project in the USA for the construction of the atomic bomb, possibly because of his committed socialist beliefs. But in 1943 he was invited to join the associated Montreal Laboratory in Canada, where he concentrated on reactor design, cosmic rays, neutrinos and the decay of muons.

In 1948, after he obtained British citizenship, he was invited by John Cockcroft to contribute to the British atomic bomb project at AERE, Harwell where he joined the Nuclear Physics Division under Egon Bretscher. In 1950 he was appointed to the chair of physics at the University of Liverpool which he was due to take up in January, 1951.

However, on August 31, 1950, in the middle of a holiday in Italy, he abruptly left Rome for Stockholm with his wife and three sons without informing friends or relatives. The next day he was helped by Soviet agents to enter the USSR from Finland. His abrupt disappearance caused much concern to many of the western intelligence services, especially those of Britain and the USA who were worried about the escape of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union after the then recent case of Klaus Fuchs. But as 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 Soviets has ever been made against him.

In the USSR Pontecorvo was welcomed with honor and given a number of privileges reserved only to the Soviet nomenclatura. He worked until his death in what is now the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, concentrating entirely on theoretical studies of high energy particles and continuing his research on neutrinos and decay of muons. In recognition of his research he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1953, membership of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1958 and two Orders of Lenin. In 1955 he appeared to the world 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. Pontecorvo did not leave the Soviet Union for many years, the first trip being in 1978 when he travelled to Italy.

He died in Dubna in 1993, afflicted by Parkinson's disease. He is now buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

In 1995, in recognition of his scientific merits, the prestigious Pontecorvo Prize has been instituted by the 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. These include:
*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 with electrons are different from those associated with muons (for experimental verification of this another Nobel prize was awarded to J. Steinberger, L. Lederman and M. Schwartz in 1988);
*the idea that neutrinos may convert into other type of neutrinos, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. This last idea was proposed in 1957 and developed in the subsequent years by Pontecorvo, till 1967 where it was given the modern form. This phenomenon was first seen with solar neutrinos in 1968 and recently and was recently confirmed by several other experiments, but it is not recognized by a Nobel prize yet (the prize awarded to Masatoshi Koshiba and Ray Davis in 2002 regards neutrino astronomy).

Trivia

*Bruno Pontecorvo was brother to film director Gillo Pontecorvo and Guido Pontecorvo, the geneticist.

elected publications

*cite journal|title=Neutron Well Logging - A New Geological Method Based on Nuclear Physics|journal=Oil and Gas Journal|year=1941|volume=40|pages=32–33
* Pages in the Development of Neutrino Physics, Usp.Fiz.Nauk 141, 1983, 675 [English ed. Sov.Phys.Usp.26, 1983, 1087]

ources

*cite book|first=Miriam|last=Mafai|title=Il lungo freddo: Storia di Bruno Pontecorvo, lo scienziato che scelse l'URSS|location=Milan|year=1992

ee also

*solar neutrino problem
*Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
*Super-Kamiokande

External links

* [http://pontecorvo.jinr.ru/ Biography / Scientific Works / Popular Articles / About B. Pontecorvo / Photoalbum] (in English and Russian)
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/27/newsid_3091000/3091390.stm 1950's news of Pontecorvo's disappearance] from the BBC archive


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Bruno Pontecorvo — (* 22. August 1913 in Pisa; † 24. September 1993 in Dubna, Russland) war ein italienischer Physiker. Er machte bedeutende Forschungen im Bereich der Neutrinos. Pontecorvo, der aus einer reichen jüdischen Familie in Pisa stammte, war der Bruder… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Pontecorvo (disambiguation) — Pontecorvo may refer to:;Places * Pontecorvo (or Ponte Corvo ), a town in Italy * The duchy of Pontecorvo, one of the papal states;Last names * Bruno Pontecorvo, an Italian physicist * Eugene Pontecorvo, a fictional character on the HBO series,… …   Wikipedia

  • Pontecorvo (Begriffsklärung) — Pontecorvo (auch Ponte Corvo) ist der Name folgender Orte: Pontecorvo, Stadt im Latium Ponte Corvo (Brücke), römische Brücke in Padua Fürst von Ponte Corvo ist ein Titel aus der napoleonischen Zeit. Bekannte Träger sind: Jean Baptiste Jules… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Pontecorvo–Maki–Nakagawa–Sakata matrix — Flavour in particle physics Flavour quantum numbers: Isospin: I or I3 Charm: C Strangeness: S Topness: T Bottomness: B′ Related quantum numbers: Baryon number: B Lepton number: L Weak isospin: T or T3 Electric charge: Q …   Wikipedia

  • PONTECORVO, BRUNO — (1913–1993), Italian nuclear physicist. Born in Italy, Pontecorvo studied at Pisa University and at Rome University, where he taught from 1933 to 1936. He then served with scientific institutions in France and in 1940 moved to the U.S., where he… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Bruno Wolkowitch — en 2009 au festival du film américain de Deauville. Données clés Nom de naissance …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Pontecorvo, Bruno — ▪ 1994       Italian born British physicist (b. Aug. 22, 1913, Marina di Pisa, Italy d. Sept. 25, 1993, Dubna, Russia), was a distinguished scientist who defected to the Soviet Union to study the peaceful uses of nuclear power. Pontecorvo was one …   Universalium

  • Gillo Pontecorvo — (November 19 1919 ndash; October 12 2006) was an Italian filmmaker, best known for La battaglia di Algeri ( The Battle of Algiers ) although he directed several movies before its release in 1966, such as the drama Kapò (1960), which takes place… …   Wikipedia

  • Guido Pontecorvo — Infobox Scientist name = PAGENAME box width = image size =150px caption = PAGENAME birth date = 29 November 1907 birth place = Pisa, Italy death date = 25 September 1999 death place = residence = |citizenship = nationality = ethnicity = field =… …   Wikipedia

  • Gillo Pontecorvo — Gillo Pontecorvo, eigentlich Gilberto Pontecorvo (* 19. November 1919 in Pisa; † 12. Oktober 2006 in Rom), war ein italienischer Filmregisseur. Gilberto Pontecorvo, dessen Brüder Bruno Pontecorvo und Guido Pontecorvo renommierte… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”