César Lattes

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César Lattes

Born

Cesare Mansueto Giulio

Lattes

11 July 1924

Died

8 March 2005

(aged 80)

Alma mater

Known for

Discovery of the

Spouse

Martha Lattes

Children

Scientific career

Fields

Institutions

Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes

(11 July 1924 – 8 March 2005), also known as

César Lattes

, was a Brazilian experimental

, one of the discoverers

of the

, a

Life

[

]

Lattes was born to a family of

, Brazil.

He began his basic studies at his home state but later on moved to

where he finished high school. He proceeded to enroll in the

, graduating in 1943, in

and

. He was part of an

initial group of young Brazilian physicists who worked under European teachers

such as

and

. Lattes was considered the most

brilliant student in his group and was noted at a very young age as a bold

researcher. His colleagues, who also became important Brazilian scientists,

were

and

. At the age of 25, he was one of the founders of the

(

Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas

Físicas

) in

From 1946 to 1948, Lattes launched on his main research line by studying

. He travelled to England arriving in February 1946, to join his

teacher Occhialini who had arrived the previous year, to work in the group

directed by

at the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory of the

There, he improved on the

used by Powell by adding more

to it. In 1947,

he collaborated

with Powell, Occhialini and

in the experimental discovery of the

(or pi

). In

the same year he, along Powell and Occhialini, determined the mass of the new particle. In April 1947 he visited a

weather station on top of the 5,200-meter-high

mountain in

, using

plates to register

rays and reveal more 'pion decay events'. A year later, working with Eugene H. Gardner (1913-1950

) at

Lattes was able to detect the artificial production of pions in the lab's

by bombarding

atoms with

. He was just 24 years old.

In 1949, Lattes returned as a professor and researcher with the

and the Brazilian

Center for Physical Research. After another brief stay in the

from 1955 to 1957, he returned to Brazil

and accepted a position at his

alma mater

, the Department of Physics of the University of São Paulo.

In 1967, Lattes accepted a position of full professor with the new Institute of Physics "Gleb Wataghin" at the

(Unicamp), which he helped to found. He became the chairman of the Department of

Chronology,

and

. In 1969, he and his group discovered the mass of the so-called

, a

phenomenon induced by naturally occurring high-energy collisions, which was detected by means of special

-chamber

nuclear emulsion plates invented by him and placed at the Chacaltaya peak of the Bolivian Andes.

Lattes retired in 1986, when he received from Unicamp the title of doctor

and

. After

retirement he continued to live in a house in the suburban area close to the university's campus. He died of a

on March 8, 2005, in

Legacy

[

]

Lattes is one of the most widely recognized and honored Brazilian physicists, and his work was fundamental for the

development of atomic physics. He was considered one of the greatest scientific leaders of Brazilian Physics and was

one of the main personalities behind the creation of the important

(

Conselho

Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

). Due to his contribution in this process, the Brazilian national

science database was named

after him.

He is one of the few Brazilian scientists with an article in the

. Although he was the main

researcher and the first author of the historical

Nature

article describing the pion, only

was awarded

the

for Physics in 1950 for "his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and

his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method". The reason for this apparent neglect is that the Nobel

Committee policy until 1960 was to give the award to the research group head only. He received the

1987.

After his death Unicamp decided to give his name to its central library.

On 11 July 2024, Google celebrated his 100th birthday with a

Quote

[

]

"Science should be universal, without a doubt. However, one should not believe unconditionally in this."

Culture

[

]

's Grammy-winning 1998 album

Quanta

includes a song dedicated to Lattes, called "Ciência e

Arte".

[

]

References

[

]

"Eugene Gardner".

Physics Today

: 30. 1951.

. The World Academy of Sciences. 2016.

Google

. Retrieved

2024-07-11

Ghoshal, Sudeshna (11 July 2024).

. Retrieved

11 July

2024

Bibliography

[

]

C.M.G. Lattes; H. Muirhead; G.P.S. Occhialini; C.F. Powell (1947). "Processes involving charged mesons".

159

(4047):

694–

697.

C.M.G. Lattes; G.P.S. Occhialini; C.F. Powell (1948). "A determination of the ratio of the masses of pi-meson and

mu-meson by the method of grain-counting".

(2):

173–

183.

E. Gardner; C.M.G. Lattes (1948).

107

(2776):

270–

271.

C.M.G. Lattes; C.Q. Orsini; I.G. Pacca; M.T. Cruz; E. Okuno; Y. Fujimoto; K. Yokoi (1963). "Observation of extremely

high energy nuclear events with emulsion chamber exposed on Mt. Chacaltaya".

(3): 2160.