Bruno Rossi

Infobox Scientist
name = Bruno B. Rossi

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caption =
birth_date = birth date|1905|4|13|df=y
birth_place = Venice, Italy
death_date = death date and age|1993|11|21|1905|4|13|df=y
death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts
alma_mater = University of Bologna
work_institution = University of Florence
University of Padua
University of Copenhagen
University of Manchester
University of Chicago
Cornell University
Manhattan Project
MIT
prizes=National Medal of Science (1983)
Wolf Prize in Physics (1987)
doctoral_students =
doctoral_advisor =
spouse =
children =
religion =
website =
footnotes =

Bruno Benedetto Rossi (April 13 1905 – November 21 1993) was a leading Italian-American experimental physicist. He made major contributions to cosmic ray and particle physics from 1930 through the 1950s, and pioneered X-ray astronomy and space plasma physics in the 1960s.

Biography

Rossi was born in Venice, Italy. After receiving the doctorate degree from the University of Bologna, he began his career in 1928 as assistant at the Physics Institute of the University of Florence where he made his first discoveries regarding the nature of cosmic rays. In 1932 he was called to the University of Padua as professor of experimental physics. There, in addition to teaching and research, Rossi planned the new Physics Institute of the University and oversaw its construction. In the fall of 1938 he was expelled from his position as a result of the racial decrees of the fascist state. Rossi was Jewish and so was his wife, Nora Lombroso (granddaughter of anthropologist, Cesare Lombroso), so they had to leave Italy and traveled to America with brief stays in Copenhagen, Denmark and Manchester, England.

They arrived at the University of Chicago in June 1939 where he was given a temporary position as research associate. Rossi immediately began a series of experiments that yielded the first proof of the decay of a fundamental particle, the mesotron, now called muon, and a precise measurement of its mean life at rest. The latter was achieved at Cornell University where he was appointed associate professor in 1942. During the war Rossi worked first as consultant on radar development at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then at Los Alamos as co-director of the Detector Group responsible for development of instrumentation for experiments that supported the development of the atomic bombs.

In the fall of 1946 Rossi was appointed professor of physics at MIT where he established the Cosmic Ray Group to investigate the nature and origins of cosmic rays and the properties of the sub-nuclear particles produced in the interaction of cosmic rays with matter. In the late 1950s, when particle accelerator experiments had come to dominate experimental particle physics, Rossi turned his attention to exploratory research made possible by the new availability of space vehicles. At MIT he initiated rocket experiments that pioneered the direct measurements of the interplanetary plasma. As a consultant to American Science and Engineering, Inc. he initiated the rocket experiments that discovered the first extra-solar source of X-rays, Scorpius X-1. Rossi was made Institute Professor at MIT in 1965.

Among his contributions to the electronic techniques of experimental physics are the inventions of the coincidence circuit (Florence 1930), the time-to-amplitude converter (Cornell 1942) and the fast ionization chamber (Los Alamos, with H. Staub 1943).

Rossi retired from MIT in 1970. From 1974 to 1980 he taught at the University of Palermo. In 1990 his autobiography, titled "Moments in the Life of a Scientist", was published by Cambridge University Press. He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1993.

Honours and awards

Awards

*Wolf Prize in Physics for his role in the development of X-ray astronomy (1987)
*National Medal of Science (1983)
*Rumford Prize award of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for "discoveries concerning the nature and origins of cosmic radiations" (1976)
*Gold Medal of the Italian Physical Society (1970)
*Doctors "honoris causa" from the universities of Palermo, Durham, and Chicago

Legacy

*Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a NASA satellite X-ray observatory
*Bruno Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society
*There is an endowed chair named in honor of Bruno Rossi at MIT. It is currently held by Prof. Claude R. Canizares.

Bibliography

*cite book | last=Rossi | first=Bruno | title=High-energy Particles | location=New York | publisher=Prentice-Hall | year=1952 | oclc=289682
*cite book | last=Rossi | first=Bruno |title=Cosmic Rays | location=New York | publisher=McGraw-Hill | year=1964 | isbn=536242
*cite book | last=Rossi | first=Bruno | coauthors=S. Olbert | title=Introduction to the Physics of Space | location=New York | publisher=McGraw-Hill | year=1970 | isbn=54021
*cite book | last=Rossi | first=Bruno | title=Moments in the Life of a Scientist | location=Cambridge | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1990 | isbn=0521364396
*cite book | last=Bruno | first=Rossi | title=Optics | location=Reading, MA | publisher=Addison Wesley | year=1957 | isbn=248228
*Citation
id = PMID:14439229
url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14439229
last=Rossi
first=Bruno
publication-date=1959 Nov.
year=1959
title=High-energy cosmic rays.
volume=201
issue=
periodical=Sci. Am.
pages=135-46

External links

* [http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/rossi/ Cosmic Ray Observations in Eritrea: Research Notes of Bruno Rossi, 1933]

Persondata
NAME= Rossi, Bruno B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Italian-American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH= 13 April 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH= Venice
DATE OF DEATH= 21 November 1993
PLACE OF DEATH= Cambridge, Massachusetts