Val Logsdon Fitch

Infobox Scientist
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name = Val Logsdon Fitch


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birth_date = Birth date and age|1923|3|10
birth_place = Merriman, Nebraska
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fields = Particle physics
workplaces = Princeton
alma_mater = Columbia
McGill University
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known_for = Discovery of CP-violation
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awards = Nobel Prize in Physics (1980)
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Val Logsdon Fitch (born March 10, 1923, Merriman, Nebraska, USA) is an American nuclear physicist. A native of Merriman, Nebraska, he graduated from McGill University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1948 and completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1954 from Columbia University. In World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. He is a member of the faculty at Princeton University.

Fitch and co-researcher James Watson Cronin were awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at [http://www.bnl.gov Brookhaven National Laboratory] that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of K-mesons, that a reaction run in reverse does not merely retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the reactions of subatomic particles are not indifferent to time. Thus the phenomenon of CP violation was discovered.

Prof. Fitch is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

External links

* [http://www.physics.princeton.edu/www/jh/research/fitch_val.html Research page from the Princeton University Physics department]
* [http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/val_logsdon_fitch.html Val Logsdon Fitch]
* [http://eraserall.bravehost.com/swq/fitch-autobio.html the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons.]