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Sunday, May 20, 2012

postheadericon Kenneth Smith

nuclear physicist whose career began in the atomic bomb project

After physicist Kenneth Smith, who died at the age of 88, was the natural part of a scientific test Cambridge in 1944, was recruited to the contribution of the United Kingdom and Canada the atomic bomb project by Sir John Cockcroft, professor in his head. Once installed in the laboratories of the reactor at Chalk River, Ontario, Ken sought to have a large number of quartz fiber dosimeters. They were cut in a shirt pocket like a pen, to measure the cumulative dose of ionizing radiation affects the body. Production and testing was effectively the kind of challenge in practice that Ken enjoyed during a career that culminated in his chair in the new University of Sussex, and research on developments in physics particles.

British scientists who came to North America has made a significant contribution to the bombs that caused the war with Japan to an end. After returning to Britain in 1946, which were housed in a camp of the airfield at Harwell, Oxfordshire, so that you can log everything they had learned. Cockcroft was in charge, and Ken has worked with Otto Frisch, another about the project. The following year, he succeeded in his post Frisch Cambridge Cockcroft, and Ken returned to Sidney Sussex College, completing his first title.

Frisch, eager to extend the work in atomic and nuclear physics in the Cavendish laboratory, research grants given to Ken and Ted Bellamy in 1948 to work together on a new line of research, microwave atomic spectroscopy frequency -. Over time, he built a machine that could be a barrier for atoms sophisticated, as well as some new spectacular physical measures.

Since 1951, Ken has continued his research alone. He continued to lead the group of atomic beams in Cavendish and write the molecular beam study (1955).

His research group has focused on the fundamental laws of physics, as it results from properties of atoms and the neutron. In 1964, James Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch Americans established that physical processes are not always symmetrical when seen as moving forward or backward in time. Russian scientist (and dissident) Andrei Sakharov said that this asymmetry is necessary to explain why a small surplus of matter survived the annihilation process after the Big Bang, allowing the material available today. Only with this asymmetry, also, the particles can, as the proton, neutron, and electron electric dipole have - and opposite electric charges separated by a distance - which are very difficult to measure

These ideas set the working group in 1965, Ken in a program to measure the neutron electric dipole, a program in collaboration with other groups, is continuing with results still more accurate. Measures of pre-theories of particle physics, and the results of the group of Ken continued to improve understanding of them.

For 15 years after his retirement in 1989, Ken has continued to make significant contributions and generous in physics research. He also became an expert in software, microprocessors and electronics, the skills used in the neutron experiments of long duration - and the storage system of marks and writing undergraduate transcripts. Last surviving founding member of the school of mathematics and physics from Sussex, took part in the celebrations of 50 years.
Ken met his wife, Verena Spinner, at a party in Cambridge in 1949 and the following year he married in his hometown of Zurich. She survives, as do their three daughters and a son.


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