César Lattes
Encyclopedia
Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes (born 11 July 1924, Curitiba
, Paraná
, Brazil
, died 8 March 2005, Campinas
, São Paulo
), also known as Cesar (or César) Lattes, was a Brazilian experimental physicist
, one of the discoverers of the pion
, a composite subatomic particle
made of a quark and an antiquark
.
Jewish immigrants in Curitiba, Southern Brazil. He did his first studies there and also in São Paulo. He then went to the University of São Paulo
, graduating in 1943, in mathematics
and physics
. He was part of an initial group of young Brazilian physicists who worked under European teachers such as Gleb Wataghin
and Giuseppe Occhialini
. Lattes was considered the most brilliant of those and was noted at a very young age as a bold researcher. His colleagues, who also became important Brazilian scientists, were Oscar Sala
, Mário Schenberg
, Roberto Salmeron
, Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos
and Jayme Tiomno
. At the age of 25, he was one of the founders of the Brazilian Center for Physical Research
(Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas) in Rio de Janeiro
.
From 1947 to 1948, Lattes launched on his main research line by studying cosmic rays. He visited a weather station on top of the 5,200-meter high Chacaltaya
mountain in Bolivia
, using photographic plates to register the rays. Travelling to England with his teacher Occhialini, Lattes went to work at the H.H. Wills Laboratory of the University of Bristol
, directed by Cecil Powell
. There, he improved on the nuclear emulsion
used by Powell by adding more boron
to it. In 1947, he made his great experimental discovery with Powell: the pion
(or pi meson
). Lattes then proceeded to write a paper for Nature
without bothering to ask for Powell's consent. In the same year, he was responsible for calculating the new particle's mass. A year later, working with Eugene Gardner at UC Berkeley
, Lattes was able to detect the artificial production of pions in the lab's cyclotron
, by bombarding carbon
atoms with alpha particle
s. He was just 24 years old.
In 1949, Lattes returned as a professor and researcher with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
and the Brazilian Center for Physical Research. After another brief stay in the USA (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 "Gleb Wataghin" Institute of Physics at the State University of Campinas, which he helped to found. He became also the chairman of the Department of Cosmic Ray
s, Chronology, High Energies and Lepton
s. In 1969, he and his group discovered the mass of the so-called fireballs, a phenomenon induced by naturally occurring high-energy collisions, and which was detected by means of special lead
-chamber nuclear emulsion plates invented by him, and placed at the Chacaltaya peak of the Bolivian Andes.
Lattes retired in 1986, when he received the titles of doctor honoris causa and professor emeritus of that university. After retirement he continued to live in a house in the suburban area very near to the University's campus. He died of a heart attack
on March 8, 2005.
(Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). Due to his contribution in this process, the Brazilian national science data-base, Lattes Platform
was named after him.
He figures as one of the few Brazilians in Isaac Asimov
's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
, as well as in the Encyclopædia Britannica
. Although he was the main researcher and the first author of the historical Nature article describing the pion, Cecil Powell alone was awarded the Nobel Prize
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. At Niels Bohr
museum, in Copenhagen, Denmark, there's a letter that says "Why Cesar Lattes did not win the Nobel Prize - Open 50 years after my death". After his death UNICAMP decided to give his name to the central library.
Curitiba
Curitiba is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. It is the largest city with the biggest economy of both Paraná and southern Brazil. The population of Curitiba numbers approximately 1.75 million people and the latest GDP figures for the city surpass US$61 billion according to...
, Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, died 8 March 2005, Campinas
Campinas
Campinas is a city and municipality located in the coastal interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. is the administrative center of the meso-region of the same name, with 3,783,597 inhabitants as of the 2010 Census, consisting of 49 cities....
, São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
), also known as Cesar (or César) Lattes, was a Brazilian experimental physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, one of the discoverers of the pion
Pion
In particle physics, a pion is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Pions are the lightest mesons and they play an important role in explaining the low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force....
, a composite subatomic particle
Subatomic particle
In physics or chemistry, subatomic particles are the smaller particles composing nucleons and atoms. There are two types of subatomic particles: elementary particles, which are not made of other particles, and composite particles...
made of a quark and an antiquark
Meson
In particle physics, mesons are subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of sub-particles, they have a physical size, with a radius roughly one femtometer: 10−15 m, which is about the size of a proton...
.
Life
Lattes was born to a family of ItalianItalian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
Jewish immigrants in Curitiba, Southern Brazil. He did his first studies there and also in São Paulo. He then went to the University of São Paulo
University of São Paulo
Universidade de São Paulo is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian university and one of the country's most prestigious...
, graduating in 1943, in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
. He was part of an initial group of young Brazilian physicists who worked under European teachers such as Gleb Wataghin
Gleb Wataghin
Gleb Vassielievich Wataghin ; was a Ukrainian-Italian experimental physicist and a great scientific leader who gave a great impulse to the teaching and research on physics in two continents: in the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; and in the University of Turin, Turin, Italy.Wataghin was...
and Giuseppe Occhialini
Giuseppe Occhialini
Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao "Beppo" Occhialini ForMemRS was an Italian physicist, who contributed to the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in 1947, with César Lattes and Cecil Frank Powell . At the time of this discovery, they were all working at the H. H...
. Lattes was considered the most brilliant of those and was noted at a very young age as a bold researcher. His colleagues, who also became important Brazilian scientists, were Oscar Sala
Oscar Sala
Oscar Sala , Italian-Brazilian nuclear physicist and important scientific leader, Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo....
, Mário Schenberg
Mário Schenberg
Mário Schenberg, , var. Mário Schönberg, Mario Schonberg, Mário Schoenberg), was a Jewish Brazilian electrical engineer, physicist, art critic and writer.-The Urca process:...
, Roberto Salmeron
Roberto Salmeron
Roberto Salmeron , Brazilian electrical engineer and experimental nuclear physicist of international renown, Emeritus Research Director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France ....
, Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos
Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos
Marcelo Damy de Sousa Santos was a Brazilian physicist.Considered as one of the most important educators and researchers in physics in Brazil, along with Cesar Lattes, José Leite Lopes and Mario Schenberg, Damy was born in Campinas, São Paulo in 1914, the son of Harald Egydio de Souza Santos a...
and Jayme Tiomno
Jayme Tiomno
Jayme Tiomno , was a Brazilian experimental and theoretical physicist with interests in particle physics and general relativity. He was member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit...
. At the age of 25, he was one of the founders of the Brazilian Center for Physical Research
Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas
The Brazilian Center for Physics Research is a physics research center sponsored by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development , linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology. CBPF was founded in 1949 from a joint effort of Cesar Lattes, José Leite Lopes, and...
(Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas) in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
.
From 1947 to 1948, Lattes launched on his main research line by studying cosmic rays. He visited a weather station on top of the 5,200-meter high Chacaltaya
Chacaltaya
Chacaltaya is a mountain in the Cordillera Real, one of the mountain ranges of the Cordillera Oriental, itself a range of the Bolivian Andes. Its elevation is . Chacaltaya's glacier - which was as old as 18,000 years – had in 1940 an area of , reduced to in 2007 and was completely gone by 2009....
mountain in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, using photographic plates to register the rays. Travelling to England with his teacher Occhialini, Lattes went to work at the H.H. Wills Laboratory of the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
, directed by Cecil Powell
Cecil Frank Powell
Cecil Frank Powell, FRS was a British physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion , a heavy subatomic particle.Powell was born in Tonbridge, Kent, England, the son of a local...
. There, he improved on the nuclear emulsion
Nuclear emulsion
In a Particle and Nuclear physics, a nuclear emulsion plate is a photographic plate with a particularly thick emulsion layer and with a very uniform grain size. Like bubble chambers, cloud chambers, and wire chambers nuclear emulsion plates record the tracks of charged particles passing through...
used by Powell by adding more boron
Boron
Boron is the chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a metalloid. Because boron is not produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust. However, boron is concentrated on Earth by the...
to it. In 1947, he made his great experimental discovery with Powell: the pion
Pion
In particle physics, a pion is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Pions are the lightest mesons and they play an important role in explaining the low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force....
(or pi meson
Meson
In particle physics, mesons are subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of sub-particles, they have a physical size, with a radius roughly one femtometer: 10−15 m, which is about the size of a proton...
). Lattes then proceeded to write a paper for Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
without bothering to ask for Powell's consent. In the same year, he was responsible for calculating the new particle's mass. A year later, working with Eugene Gardner at UC Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, Lattes was able to detect the artificial production of pions in the lab's cyclotron
Cyclotron
In technology, a cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator. In physics, the cyclotron frequency or gyrofrequency is the frequency of a charged particle moving perpendicularly to the direction of a uniform magnetic field, i.e. a magnetic field of constant magnitude and direction...
, by bombarding carbon
Carbon
Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...
atoms with alpha particle
Alpha particle
Alpha particles consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium nucleus, which is classically produced in the process of alpha decay, but may be produced also in other ways and given the same name...
s. He was just 24 years old.
In 1949, Lattes returned as a professor and researcher with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is one of the largest federal universities of Brazil, where public universities comprise the majority of the best and most qualified institutions...
and the Brazilian Center for Physical Research. After another brief stay in the USA (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 "Gleb Wataghin" Institute of Physics at the State University of Campinas, which he helped to found. He became also the chairman of the Department of Cosmic Ray
Cosmic ray
Cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation...
s, Chronology, High Energies and Lepton
Lepton
A lepton is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. The best known of all leptons is the electron which governs nearly all of chemistry as it is found in atoms and is directly tied to all chemical properties. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons , and neutral...
s. In 1969, he and his group discovered the mass of the so-called fireballs, a phenomenon induced by naturally occurring high-energy collisions, and which was detected by means of special lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
-chamber nuclear emulsion plates invented by him, and placed at the Chacaltaya peak of the Bolivian Andes.
Lattes retired in 1986, when he received the titles of doctor honoris causa and professor emeritus of that university. After retirement he continued to live in a house in the suburban area very near to the University's campus. He died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
on March 8, 2005.
Legacy
Lattes is one of the most distinguished and honored Brazilian physicists, and his work was fundamental for the development of atomic physics. He was also a great scientific leader of Brazilian Physics and was one of the main personalities behind the creation of the important Brazilian National Research CouncilConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
The Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico is an organization of the Brazilian federal government under the Ministry of Science and Technology, dedicated to the promotion of scientific and technological research and to the formation of human resources for research in the...
(Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). Due to his contribution in this process, the Brazilian national science data-base, Lattes Platform
Lattes Platform
The Lattes Platform is an information system maintained by the Brazilian Government to manage information on science, technology and innovation related to individual researchers and institutions working in Brazil.It is named after a Brazilian physicist, Cesar Lattes, and it is maintained by the...
was named after him.
He figures as one of the few Brazilians in Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology is a history of science by Isaac Asimov, written as the biographies of over 1500 scientists. Organized chronologically, beginning with Imhotep and concluding with Stephen Hawking , each biographical entry is numbered, allowing for easy...
, as well as in the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. Although he was the main researcher and the first author of the historical Nature article describing the pion, Cecil Powell alone was awarded the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
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. At Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...
museum, in Copenhagen, Denmark, there's a letter that says "Why Cesar Lattes did not win the Nobel Prize - Open 50 years after my death". After his death UNICAMP decided to give his name to the central library.
Quote
- "Science should be universal, without a doubt. However, one should not believe unconditionally in this."
External links
- C.M.G. Lattes. Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Special Dedication to Cesar Lattes. UNICAMP Archive System, March 2005.
- To Cesar What Belongs to Lattes. State University of Campinas (in Portuguese).
- Cesar Lattes, a Brief Biography. Brazilian Center of Physical Research (in Portuguese).
- Photos of César Lattes at Chacaltaya, Bolivia.
- Lattes Platform (in Portuguese).