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The Google Doodle released today ( July 11 ) is a tribute to César Lattes , a pioneering Brazilian physicist who would have celebrated his 100th birthday today .
Born to Italian immigrants in 1924 in Curitiba , Brazil , Lattes is widely credited with the find of the subatomic particle lie with as the pion , or pi meson — which is produced in the shockwaves from asterisk explosion and rains down on Earth in the form of cosmic ray .
Today’s Google Doodle shows César Lattes surrounded by atoms.
" Happy natal day César Lattes , give thanks you for paving the agency for experimental physic in Latin America and around the humanity ! " Google representativeswrote in a web log posthonoring Lattes .
Lattes ’ induction to innovative experimental aperient began in 1934 at the recently founded University of São Paulo , where he was the only student recruit in a grade run by the then - notable Italian observational physicist Giuseppe Occhialini . Occhialini taught Lattes to evolve photographic movie exposed to radioactivity .
In 1944 Occhialini fail to the University of Bristol to work with the English physicist Cecil Frank Powell on the maturation of atomic photographic emulsion plates that could detect traces of extremely energetic particles . consist of light-sensitive smooth-spoken salt suspended inside gelatin , the plates , upon development , clearly demo the track of charged particles that had passed through them .
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After obtaining one of the plates sent by Occhialini , Lattes realized that it was missing a key ingredient : B .
" Lattes right suspected that adding boron to photographic plate would give him a clearer image of corpuscle breaking down , " according to the Google blog position . " It worked so well , he could see each proton . "
In April 1947 , at 23 years old , Lattes climbed 17,060 feet ( 5,200 meters ) to a atmospheric condition station atop Bolivia ’s Mount Chacaltaya with two of his photographic plate . There , clear as twenty-four hours inside the tracks preserved in the plates , Lattes get a line a subatomic particle that had been auspicate but never seen — the pion .
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Consisting of a quark and an antiquark paste together by the substantial nuclear violence , the pi-meson ( or pi meson ) can add up in three distinct type . The breakthrough earned Powell — but neither Lattes nor Occhialini — the1950 Nobel Prize .
In fact , Lattes was constitute seven times for theNobel Prize — despite never having clear a doctor’s degree — but never won .
Lattes after returned to Brazil to teach , and give out in 2005 from a affectionateness attack in the suburban area near his São Paulo campus . Despite his rockstar status across Brazil and Latin America , Lattes was characteristically casual about his fame .
" I was dragged along by history , and I did my best , " Lattestold the Brazilian science and refinement cartridge holder Superinteressantein 1997 . " If I had to choose , today I would be a veterinary . "
