World Celebrates Deceased Italian Physicist For CERN/ESA Developments
Born on September 5, 1908, soon to be one-hundred years ago, one of the fathers of Italian physics and a pioneer in nuclear research, Professor Edoardo Amaldi, died on December 6, 1989 at the age of 81 years of age. Studying under Enrico Fermi, recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his research on nuclear fission, Amaldi was also a physics professor for 41 years at the University of Rome. The reason this is so important is because he played a key role in CERN’s development and also that of the European Space Agency.
In Italy, Amaldi led the development of gravitational wave research which led to the development of the long-term hosting of the “Explorer gravitational wave detector” at CERN. Recognized for forging the first links between the “gravitational wave community-and-high energy physics community, his links traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to develop detectors at Stanford, Louisiana, and Rome” (IOP Electronic Journals). Later on, they went to the Niobe detector at Perthe. The international research links and collaborations of which he supported have now extended over the years to the GWIC, the Gravitational Wave International Committee—presently the official sponsor of the Amaldi Conferences.
The son of Edoardo Amaldi–Ugo Amaldi –is a particle physicist at CERN who works on developing hadron-therapy techniques with the TERA Foundation, and writes a wonderful article in Physics World about his father. Useful and economically valuable technologies that have arisen directly or indirectly from gravitational wave research are :
• Improved SQUID magnetometers: brain scanning and many other applications
• Low noise microwave oscillators: improved radars
• Sapphire clocks: flywheel oscillators for atomic clocks
• Low outgassing vacuum materials: high performance vacuum systems
• Ultra-precision mirrors and coatings: improved optical systems
• High efficiency lasers: numerous present and future applications from materials cutting to medicine and metrology
• Improved vibration isolation: electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and semiconductor manufacture etc
• Low acoustic loss materials: metrology systems
• Gravity gradiometers: mineral exploration
• High performance position sensors: accelerometers, tilt sensors, seismometers
• Laser stabilization: metrology systems, time standards
• Data analysis: weak signal detection
• Very low optical absorption materials: high laser power applications
This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Mission History, Public Relations, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
