Bernice Weldon Sargent
| Bernice Weldon Sargent | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
24 September 1906 Williamsburg, Ontario |
| Died | 17 December 1993 (aged 87) Kingston, Ontario |
| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | Queen's University (B.A. (Hons), 1926, M.A. 1927) University of Cambridge (Ph.D., 1932) |
| Known for | Sargent curves |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions |
Queen's University Montreal Laboratory |
| Thesis | The Disintegration Electrons (1932) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ernest Rutherford and Charles Drummond Ellis |
Bernice Weldon Sargent, MBE, FRSC (24 September 1906 – 17 December 1993) was a Canadian physicist who worked at the Manhattan Project's Montreal Laboratory during the Second World War as head of its nuclear physics division. In his 1932 doctoral thesis, he discovered the relationship between the radioactive disintegration constants of beta particle-emitting radioisotopes and corresponding logarithms of their maximum beta particle energies. These plots are known as "Sargent curves".
Bernice Weldon Sargent was born in Williamsburg, Ontario, on 24 September 1906, the son of Henry Sargent, a farmer, and his wife Ella née Dillabough. He attended Chesterville High School and Morrisburg Collegiate Institute. He was awarded a Prince of Wales Entrance Scholarship and a Carter Scholarship, and entered Queen's University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in mathematics and physics in 1926, and a Master of Arts degree the following year.
In 1928, Sargent was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to England to study at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford. His 1932 doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Rutherford and Charles Drummond Ellis, on "The Disintegration Electrons", subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, described relationship between the radioactive disintegration constants of beta particle-emitting radioisotopes and corresponding logarithms of their maximum beta particle energies. These plots are today known as "Sargent curves" or "Sargent diagrams". This was used by Enrico Fermi in developing his theory of beta decay.
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