Patrick Blackett
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031095
On this date in 1897, Nobel Prize laureate Patrick Blackett was born in London, England. Blackett spent the first 10 years of his career at the Cavendish Laboratory working with Ernest Rutherford. In 1932 he created, with Giuseppe Occhialini, a version of a cloud chamber that only took a picture when a cosmic ray particle’s passage triggered geiger counters. The device provided confirmation of the existence of the positron and it was his study of cosmic rays with the device that earned him the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics. He later became interested in geophysics and helped find strong evidence for continental drift. In 1965 he was made President of the Royal Society. (Image credit: Howard Coster; Emmanuel Levy)
Date in History: 18 November 1897
