Carl David Anderson

David Carl " Charles" Anderson ( born September 3, 1905 in New York; † January 11, 1991 in San Marino, California ) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate.

Life

Anderson studied at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech ) in Pasadena, California, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in 1927 and his PhD degree in 1930 with a thesis on the distribution of the electron emission in cosmic gases under the influence of X-rays. Two years later, the now as a research fellow and co-workers of Robert Andrews Millikan at Caltech working Anderson succeeded in proving the Paul Dirac postulated the positron in 1929 with the help of the Wilson cloud chamber. Together with Seth Neddermeyer he had in 1932 that high-energy gamma radiation causes the emission of positrons in the penetration of matter. Therefore the first example of antimatter had been found. For his discovery of the positron in 1936, he received the Nobel Prize for Physics, along with Victor Franz Hess for his work, which had performed in Vienna in 1912 to the discovery of cosmic rays.

Together with Neddermeyer discovered Anderson 1936 muons, short-lived charge-carrying particles with 207 times the mass of electrons. 1933 Anderson was appointed assistant professor and was appointed Professor of Physics at Caltech in 1939, offering a senior post in the American Uranium Project, which later became the Manhattan Project, he refused. During the war, he worked on various government research projects, particularly in the field of rocket research and development. The development at Caltech rocket with solid propellant were used in the final stages of the war for the first time.

Anderson remained until 1976 Professor at Caltech (from 1977 he was a professor emeritus ) and was from 1962 to 1970 the Department of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech before. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1938. He died in 1991 at the age of 85 years and is buried in Los Angeles.