Val Logsdon Fitch facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Val Logsdon Fitch
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| Born | March 10, 1923 |
| Died | February 5, 2015 (aged 91) |
| Alma mater | Columbia McGill University |
| Known for | Discovery of CP-violation |
| Awards | E. O. Lawrence Award (1968) John Price Wetherill Medal (1976) Nobel Prize in Physics (1980) National Medal of Science (1993) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Particle physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Studies of X-rays from Mu-Mesonic Atoms (1954) |
| Doctoral advisor | James Rainwater |
Val Logsdon Fitch (March 10, 1923 – February 5, 2015) was an American nuclear physicist. He won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics with James Cronin. They earned this award for an experiment in 1964. Their work showed that some tiny particle reactions do not follow basic symmetry rules.
They studied how K-mesons (a type of subatomic particle) decay. They found that a reaction run backward does not exactly retrace its original path. This meant that these tiny particle reactions are not always the same if time is reversed. This discovery is called CP violation. It changed how scientists thought about the universe's fundamental laws.
Fitch was born on a cattle ranch in Merriman, Nebraska. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. He later earned his degree from McGill University and his PhD in physics from Columbia University in 1954. He taught at Princeton University from 1954 until he retired in 2005.
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Early life and education
Val Logsdon Fitch was born on March 10, 1923. His family lived on a cattle ranch near Merriman, Nebraska. He was the youngest of three children. His father, Fred Fitch, raised cattle. His mother, Frances, was a school teacher.
Soon after Val was born, his father was hurt in a horse accident. He could no longer work on the ranch. So, the family moved to Gordon, Nebraska. His father started an insurance business there. Val went to school in Gordon. He graduated from Gordon High School in 1940 as the top student.
He attended Chadron State College for three years. Then he moved to Northwestern University.
Working on the Manhattan Project
Val Fitch's studies were stopped when he joined the U.S. Army in 1943 during World War II. After basic training, he went to Carnegie Institute of Technology. There, he trained under a special Army program. This program sent soldiers to colleges for intense courses.
Fitch was part of the Special Engineer Detachment (SED). This group provided skilled technicians for the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was a secret effort to build the first atomic bomb during the war.
The Army sent Fitch to the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. Many famous scientists worked there. Fitch met people like Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and Richard C. Tolman. He even took physics classes taught by some of them. He learned a lot about experimental physics, which means doing experiments to test ideas.
He helped test mock (practice) atomic bombs. He also worked at the Trinity site. There, he saw the very first Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945. He left the Army in 1946. He stayed at Los Alamos for another year as a civilian to earn money. He briefly returned to Los Alamos in the summer of 1948.
Becoming a physicist
His experiences during the war made Fitch want to become a physicist. Robert Bacher, a physics leader at Los Alamos, offered him a chance to study at Cornell University. But first, Fitch needed to finish his first college degree. He chose to go to McGill University in Canada. He graduated from McGill in 1948 with a degree in electrical engineering.
Then, Fitch decided to get his advanced degree (PhD) at Columbia University. His advisor there was James Rainwater. Rainwater gave him an idea for his research. He suggested studying "mu-mesic atoms." These are special atoms where a tiny particle called an electron is replaced by another particle called a muon. At the time, these atoms were only ideas; no one had ever seen them.
Fitch designed an experiment to find these mu-mesic atoms. He looked for gamma rays (a type of energy wave) that these atoms might give off. Columbia University had a new machine called a cyclotron that could make muons. Also, new tools from the war, like better detectors, helped his experiment.
At first, they found nothing. But Rainwater suggested looking beyond the expected energy range. When they did, they found what they were looking for! They discovered mu-mesic atoms. They also learned that the center of an atom, called the atomic nucleus, was smaller than scientists had thought.
Fitch finished his PhD in 1954. His research was published in a science journal.
Career at Princeton and Nobel Prize
In 1949, Fitch married Elise Cunningham. They had two sons. Elise passed away in 1972. In 1976, he married Daisy Harper Sharp. He gained two stepdaughters and a stepson.
After getting his PhD, Fitch became interested in "strange particles" and K mesons. In 1954, he joined the physics team at Princeton University. He stayed there for the rest of his career. He held several important professor positions before retiring in 1993. He also led the physics department from 1976 to 1981.
Fitch did much of his research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. There, he met James Cronin. They often played bridge while waiting for their experiments to run. Cronin had built a new type of detector called a spark chamber. Fitch realized this detector would be perfect for studying K mesons.
K mesons were interesting because they could decay (break down) into either matter or antimatter. Fitch, Cronin, and their colleagues James Christenson and René Turlay set up their experiment. They used a large particle accelerator called the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven.
They found something unexpected. The decay of neutral K mesons did not follow a rule called CP symmetry. This meant that K mesons that broke down into positrons (a type of antimatter) did so faster than those that broke down into electrons (a type of matter).
At first, people didn't fully understand how important this discovery was. But later, a scientist named Andrei Sakharov realized something big. This discovery helped explain why our universe is mostly made of matter and not antimatter. Simply put, their work helped answer the question, "Why do we exist?" For this amazing discovery, Fitch and Cronin received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Awards and later life
Besides the Nobel Prize, Fitch received other important awards:
- The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1968.
- The John Price Wetherill Medal in 1976.
- The National Medal of Science in 1993.
He was a member of important science groups. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1964. He also became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1966. In 1981, Fitch helped start the World Cultural Council. He also received the Golden Plate Award. He was president of the American Physical Society from 1988 to 1989. He also served on government science committees.
In 2008, Fitch was one of 20 American Nobel Prize winners in Physics who signed a letter. They asked President George W. Bush to provide more money for basic science research. They wanted to help important science organizations like the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
Val Logsdon Fitch passed away at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on February 5, 2015. He was 91 years old.
See also
In Spanish: Val Logsdon Fitch para niños
