William Alfred Fowler
William Alfred " Willy " Fowler ( born August 9, 1911 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † March 14 1995 in Pasadena ( California)) was an American astro physicist.
Fowler began his studies in physics at Ohio State University (Bachelor as a physics engineer 1933). The doctor in nuclear physics, he received in 1936 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech ). His dissertation treated nuclear reactions of protons with light elements, which are important for the generation of energy by means of the stars in CNO cycle. He remained until his death at the W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory at Caltech. His most significant work, Synthesis of the Elements in Stars (Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 29, Issue 4, pp. 547-650 ), along with Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge and Fred Hoyle, appeared in 1957. Represented in the theory is after the initials of the author's name known as B2FH theory. The article explains the formation and distribution of chemical elements, nucleosynthesis, by nuclear reactions in stars (except the allerleichtesten that were formed in the Big Bang ).
In 1939 he was Assistant Professor, Associate Professor in 1942 and Professor in 1946 at Caltech. In 1970, he became Institute Professor there. From 1985 he was professor emeritus. In 1954/55 and 1961/62 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the University of Cambridge. In 1966 he was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1963 at the University of Washington.
Fowler in 1983 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions that are crucial for the distribution of chemical elements in the universe.
Fowler grew up in Lima, on, a railway junction, where there is also the LIMA Locomotive Works. Throughout his life he was fascinated by steam-powered locomotives and traveled with the last drawn by steam locomotives trains such as the Trans-Siberian. On his 60th birthday he received from colleagues and former students a model locomotive paid.
Honors
He was since 1956 a member of the National Academy of Sciences ( Physics Department which he presided from 1971 to 1974 ) and since 1946 a Fellow of the American Physical Society, which he was president in 1976.