Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos
Encyclopedia
Marcelo Damy de Sousa Santos (July 14, 1914 – November 29, 2009) was a Brazil
ian physicist
.
Considered as one of the most important educators and researcher
s 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 photographer, and Maria Luiza Damy de Souza Santos. He did his secondary studies in the State Gymnasium (later to be called Colégio Culto à Ciência
) and was a keen student of sciences, particularly physics
and chemistry
.
In 1933, he was admitted to the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo
to study electrical engineering
, but eventually switched to physics at the invitation of Prof. Gleb Wataghin
, a Russian physicist who was teaching at the time in the university, whose classes Damy enjoyed to listen, although they were given in a different course from his. He graduated in the first class of the course of physics at USP.
During his undergraduate years, Damy became interested in radioactivity. This interest started his successful lifelong career in experimental nuclear physics
. After graduation he went to Cambridge University, in Cambridge, United Kingdom at 24, with a grant from the British Council
, under the supervision of Prof. William L. Bragg (Nobel Prize in Physics
). In England he became friends with Edmundo Barbosa da Silva, Oxford University student and future colleague in the Atomic Energy Commission of the Brazilian National Research Council. Back in Brazil, Damy worked as a research scientist for the Brazilian Navy
, especially in the development of a sonar
, working in a laboratory on the premises of the department of physics at the USP Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Letters until the end of World War II
(1945). For this important work he received the Brazilian Medal of Naval Merit.
In 1945, at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation
, Damy spent nine months at the University of Illinois. where he worked with Prof. Donald William Kerst
, inventor of the betatron
. Returning once again to Brazil, Damy accepted an assistant professorship at the Department of Physics of USP, and helped install there in 1950 a betatron, the first particle accelerator
operating in Latin America
. He also developed and installed the first nuclear reactor
in Brazil, still in working order today. Another area of research of Damy was cosmic rays, particularly aimed at assessing the nature of the penetrating showers of cosmic rays. He demonstrated that these showers had atomic particles such as meson
s, which had a great penetrating power without losing considerably part of its energy
. Along with Gleb Wataghin and Paulus Aulus Pompéia he found that these showers are more energetic than previously supposed. This work was published internationally.
Damy was one of the greatest scientific leaders in Brazil, helping to found many important research and educational institutions in his area. He was a founder of the Institute of Atomic Energy and the Institute of Research on Nuclear Energy (IPEN), and its first superintendent, from 1956 to 1961. He was also president of the National Commission of Nuclear Energy (CNEN) from 1961 to 1964.
After retiring as professor emeritus from USP in 1968, Damy helped to consolidate the newly established State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and took over as director of the Institute of Physics, which received the name of his former professor, Gleb Wataghin. Furthermore, he worked as a professor of nuclear physics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
(PUC-SP) and, since 1988, collaborated again in research work done at IPEN. He authored over 80 papers and was a member of several scientific societies in Brazil and abroad, with emphasis on the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
.
He married Lucia Toledo de Souza Santos in 1947.
Damy died on November 29, 2009, from complications of a stroke.
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...
ian 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...
.
Considered as one of the most important educators and researcher
Researcher
A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...
s in 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...
in Brazil, along with Cesar Lattes
César Lattes
Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes , also known as Cesar Lattes, was a Brazilian experimental physicist, one of the discoverers of the pion, a composite subatomic particle made of a quark and an antiquark.-Life:Lattes was born to a family of Italian Jewish immigrants in Curitiba, Southern Brazil...
, José Leite Lopes
José Leite Lopes
José Leite Lopes , noted Brazilian theoretical physicist in the field of quantum field theory and particle physics.-Life:...
and Mario 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:...
, Damy was born in 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
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
in 1914, the son of Harald Egydio de Souza Santos a photographer, and Maria Luiza Damy de Souza Santos. He did his secondary studies in the State Gymnasium (later to be called Colégio Culto à Ciência
Colégio Culto à Ciência
The Colégio Culto à Ciência , currently denominated E.E. Culto à Ciência), is a public secondary school located in the city of Campinas, state of São Paulo, Brazil...
) and was a keen student of sciences, particularly 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...
and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
.
In 1933, he was admitted to the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo
Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo
The Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo is an engineering school in the University of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil...
to study electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
, but eventually switched to physics at the invitation of Prof. 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...
, a Russian physicist who was teaching at the time in the university, whose classes Damy enjoyed to listen, although they were given in a different course from his. He graduated in the first class of the course of physics at USP.
During his undergraduate years, Damy became interested in radioactivity. This interest started his successful lifelong career in experimental nuclear physics
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...
. After graduation he went to Cambridge University, in Cambridge, United Kingdom at 24, with a grant from the British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
, under the supervision of Prof. William L. Bragg (Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
). In England he became friends with Edmundo Barbosa da Silva, Oxford University student and future colleague in the Atomic Energy Commission of the Brazilian National Research Council. Back in Brazil, Damy worked as a research scientist for the Brazilian Navy
Brazilian Navy
The Brazilian Navy is a branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces responsible for conducting naval operations. It is the largest navy in Latin America...
, especially in the development of a sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...
, working in a laboratory on the premises of the department of physics at the USP Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Letters until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(1945). For this important work he received the Brazilian Medal of Naval Merit.
In 1945, at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, Damy spent nine months at the University of Illinois. where he worked with Prof. Donald William Kerst
Donald William Kerst
Donald William Kerst was an American physicist.He was born in Galena, Illinois. At the University of Wisconsin he earned a bachelor's degree in 1934, then was awarded a Ph.D. in 1937. For a year he worked at General Electric Company, then he taught at the University of Illinois from 1938 until...
, inventor of the betatron
Betatron
A betatron is a cyclotron developed by Donald Kerst at the University of Illinois in 1940 to accelerate electrons, but the concepts ultimately originate from Rolf Widerøe and previous development occurred in Germany through Max Steenbeck in the 1930s. The betatron is essentially a transformer with...
. Returning once again to Brazil, Damy accepted an assistant professorship at the Department of Physics of USP, and helped install there in 1950 a betatron, the first particle accelerator
Particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...
operating in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. He also developed and installed the first nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
in Brazil, still in working order today. Another area of research of Damy was cosmic rays, particularly aimed at assessing the nature of the penetrating showers of cosmic rays. He demonstrated that these showers had atomic particles such as 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...
s, which had a great penetrating power without losing considerably part of its energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
. Along with Gleb Wataghin and Paulus Aulus Pompéia he found that these showers are more energetic than previously supposed. This work was published internationally.
Damy was one of the greatest scientific leaders in Brazil, helping to found many important research and educational institutions in his area. He was a founder of the Institute of Atomic Energy and the Institute of Research on Nuclear Energy (IPEN), and its first superintendent, from 1956 to 1961. He was also president of the National Commission of Nuclear Energy (CNEN) from 1961 to 1964.
After retiring as professor emeritus from USP in 1968, Damy helped to consolidate the newly established State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and took over as director of the Institute of Physics, which received the name of his former professor, Gleb Wataghin. Furthermore, he worked as a professor of nuclear physics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
The Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and popular known as simply PUC or the Catholic University is a private and non-profit Catholic university. It is one of the largest and most prestigious Brazilian universities...
(PUC-SP) and, since 1988, collaborated again in research work done at IPEN. He authored over 80 papers and was a member of several scientific societies in Brazil and abroad, with emphasis on the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Brazilian Academy of Sciences
The Brazilian Academy of Sciences is the national academy of Brazil. It is headquartered in the city of Rio de Janeiro and was founded in 1916....
.
He married Lucia Toledo de Souza Santos in 1947.
Damy died on November 29, 2009, from complications of a stroke.
Quote
"A good teacher is a researcher who likes to tell the things he does and sees others doing. I do not know any good teacher who was not, or isn't yet, a researcher".External links
- Marcelo Damy S. Santos. Biografia e Entrevista. Notáveis da Ciência Brasileira. Canal Ciência, IBICT (in Portuguese)
- Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos. Entrevista. Revista Cienc. Cult. vol.55 no.4 São Paulo Oct./Dec. 2003 (in Portuguese)
- History of the Department of Cosmic Rays and Chronology, Institute of Physics Gleb Wataghin, State University of Campinas
- Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos and the Nuclear Physics in Brazil. In Portuguese.
- Marcelo Damy and the Revolution in the Teaching of Physics. Estud. Avançados USP. vol.8 no.22 São Paulo Sept./Dec. 1994 (In Portuguese). The best and most complete interview about his life story.