Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett

Born Nov. 18, 1897, in London. English physicist; member (since 1933) and president of the London Royal Society (since 1965).

Blackett graduated from Cambridge University in 1919. He worked in the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University between 1923 and 1933. He was a professor at the universities of London (1933–37 and 1953–65) and Manchester (1937–53). Blackett was the first to photograph the splitting of nitrogen atomic nuclei by α-particles (1925); he also studied the properties of α-rays. In 1933–34 together with G. P. S. Occhialini he studied the composition and spectrum of fast particles in cosmic radiation using an automatically controlled Geiger counter. He explained the seasonal fluctuations in the intensity of cosmic radiation; the explanation was confirmed by subsequent studies on the decay of cosmic ray mesons. Blackett won the Nobel Prize in 1948. He is a member of many academies of sciences and scientific societies throughout the world. Blackett became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1966.