CHAMBERLAIN, Owen. “Example of an Antiproton–Nucleon Annihilation” , in Physical Review, vol 102 No. 3 pp. 921–923, May 1, 1956. Single issue with original wrappers. Name on front cover, tiny split at bottom of spine, otherwise fine. $350
- Offered with Robert Hofstadter, “Elastic Scattering of 188 MeV Electrons from Proton and the Alpha Particle” same issue, pp. 851–85.
- Offered with Müller and Bahadur, “Field Ionization of Gases at a Metal Surface and the Resolution of the Field Ion Microscope” , same issue, pp.624-631.
“Chamberlain provides definitive evidence of the annihilation of a proton, the confirmation of the discovery of the antiproton. Hofstadter calculates the size of a proton. Muller and Bahadur describe the first viewing of an atom. “ $350
- “Owen [as he had everyone call him, “students and colleagues alike”] had first become interested in looking for antiprotons during a visit to Brookhaven National Laboratory in the summer of 1953. He thought that antiprotons must exist, but he was really turned on to the chase when he heard that Maurice Goldhaber had bet Hartland Snyder $500 that they did not exist. In an oral history completed in 2000, Owen stated, “Well, I have great respect for Maurice Goldhaber as a physicist, and I suspect he made the bet when he was a little drunk, but even when drunk, Maurice Goldhaber is a good physicist. So if someone of the stature of Maurice thought maybe antiprotons didn’t exist, then this was a real spur to showing that they did. And I think it was at that moment that I decided: ‘By Jove, this is what I want to do.’ ”
The experiment itself was simple and elegant. Antiprotons were produced when the proton beam in the Bevatron struck an internal copper target. Since the antiprotons were negatively charged, the machine’s magnetic field bent them out of the Bevatron’s circular orbit into an external beamline where their charge, momentum, and velocity were measured.After about a month of intermittent data taking, the group was able to report in September 1955 the unambiguous observation of antiprotons. The Nobel Prize followed in 1959.”--”Physics Today”, 59/8, August 1, 2006, pg 70, obituary for Chamberlain.
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