Owen Chamberlain
Chamberlain, Owen,
1920–2006, American physicist, b. San Francisco, Calif., Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1948. He was on the faculty at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, from 1949 until his retirement in 1989, when he was named professor emeritus. Chamberlain received the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Emilio SegrèSegrè, Emilio,1905–89, Italian-American physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Rome, 1928. Segrè was a professor at the Univ. of Rome (1932–36), a researcher at the Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. for producing and identifying the antiproton, a subatomic particle identical to the protonproton,
elementary particle having a single positive electrical charge and constituting the nucleus of the ordinary hydrogen atom. The positive charge of the nucleus of any atom is due to its protons.
..... Click the link for more information. but with a negative electrical charge. Their 1955 finding set the stage for the discovery of many additional antiparticlesantiparticle,
elementary particle corresponding to an ordinary particle such as the proton, neutron, or electron, but having the opposite electrical charge and magnetic moment.
..... Click the link for more information. , and antiprotons have since become an integral part of high-energy physics experiments.
Chamberlain, Owen
Born July 10, 1920, in San Francisco. American physicist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1960).
Chamberlain graduated from Dartmouth College in 1941 and received a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1949. From 1942 to 1946, he worked at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on the development of the atomic bomb. He joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in 1948, becoming a professor at the university in 1958.
Chamberlain’s main works deal with nuclear physics and particle physics. In 1955, Chamberlain discovered the antiproton, for which he shared a Nobel Prize with E. Segré in 1959.