Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart

Alternate Name

Baron Blackett of Chelsea

Born London, England, 18 November 1897

Died London, England, 13 July 1974

British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery among cosmic-ray secondaries of the particle now called the muon, confirmation of the positron (discovered by Carl Anderson ), and for the instrument development that made these possible. Blackett received his early education at Osborne and Dartmouth Naval Colleges and was commissioned as a midshipman at the outbreak of World War I, though he had not yet completed his education. He participated in the battles of the Falkland Islands and Jutland, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Blackett had decided by the end of the war to resign his commission and briefly visited the laboratory of James Franck at Göttingen, but the Navy sent him and about 400 other young officers up to Cambridge University for a 6-month course to complete their formal education, and within a few...