Abstract
Giuseppe Occhialini’s stay in Cambridge at the Cavendish laboratory spanned three years, from 1931 to 1934, although he originally had left Italy for England with the idea of staying only three months. This “Cambridge period” turned out to be most important in his scientific life and established him as a confirmed researcher. The work he performed on cloud chambers, cosmic rays and the positron, with the Cavendish physicist Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett made him one of the leading figures in the international scientific scene of the thirties. It contributed an essential part of our present-day physical knowledge.
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References
The Occhialini Archive, deposited at the University of Milan in the Physics department has no documents on the Cambridge period. In a letter to Carl D. Anderson, Occhialini explained: “I thought that I had some documentation of the Wilson chamber work in the early days with Blackett, but during my peregrinations in England, Belgium and Brazil, this material has been lost.” (Letter to C. D. Anderson, Occhialini Archive). However, the whole of Occhialini’s correspondence had not yet been examined. We may hope that in this supplementary source, more information about Occhialini’s days in Cambridge will be unearthed.
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Bustamante, M.C. (2006). Giuseppe Occhialini and the history of cosmic-ray physics in the 1930s: From Florence to Cambridge. In: Redondi, P., Sironi, G., Tucci, P., Vegni, G. (eds) The Scientific Legacy of Beppo Occhialini. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-37354-4_2
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