Patrick Blackett
1897–1974, London, England, London, England
English physicist who perfected the Wilson cloud chamber for nuclear physics and cosmic-ray research; he received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett trained as a naval officer and served in the First World War before studying physics at Cambridge, where Rutherford encouraged him to exploit the Wilson cloud chamber. In 1933 he moved to the University of Manchester, then to Imperial College London in 1953, building leading schools of cosmic-ray research.
During the Second World War he pioneered operational research in Britain, advising the navy and air force on anti-submarine campaigns and bombing strategy. After the war he studied rock magnetism, contributing to the acceptance of continental drift, and was made a life peer in 1969.
Nobel-winning work
Blackett automated the Wilson cloud chamber by coupling the expansion stroke to a camera shutter, allowing sweeping series of particle tracks. In 1925 he obtained the first photographs of nuclear disintegration: an alpha particle absorbed by a nitrogen nucleus emitted a proton and left oxygen — a direct image of the transmutation Rutherford discovered in 1919.
In 1933, with Giuseppe Occhialini and a chamber triggered by Geiger–Müller counters, he confirmed Anderson's positron and recorded electron–positron pair production and annihilation in cosmic rays, alongside studies of cosmic-ray showers. These achievements were honoured by the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics 'for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation'.
Workplaces: University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, Imperial College London
United Kingdom