This Week in Physics History: Sept. 24 - 30
Monday September 24, 2007
- Sept. 30, 1870 - French physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin is born. His work on the discontinuous structure of matter (i.e. atomic theory) helped earn him the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Sept. 30, 1882 - German physicist Hans Wilhelm Geiger is born. He was a co-inventor of the Geiger counter and carried out the Geiger-Marsden experiment that discovered the atomic nucleus, as well as performing work that set the stage for Ernest Rutherford's model of the atom.
- Sept. 29, 1901 - Italian physicist Enrico Fermi is born. Fermi is considered one of the key figures in the early development of particle physics and quantum physics. He received the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity. His most notable work, however, is in the development of the first nuclear reactor. FermiLab, near Chicago, IL, is named after him and is one of the world's foremost centers for research in particle physics.
- Sept. 24, 1945 - German physicist Hans Wilhelm Geiger dies. As his birth is noted above, it will be obvious that he died less than a week before his birthday.
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