Richard Henry Dalitz
| Dick Dalitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | Richard Henry Dalitz 28 February 1925 Dimboola, Australia |
| Died | 13 January 2006 (aged 80) Oxford, England |
| Nationality | Australian, British |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions |
University of Bristol University of Birmingham Cornell University Enrico Fermi Institute University of Oxford |
| Alma mater |
Melbourne University University of Cambridge |
| Thesis | Zero-zero transitions in nuclei (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Nicholas Kemmer |
| Doctoral students |
Frank Close Christopher Llewellyn Smith Stanley Mandelstam |
| Known for |
Dalitz plot Dalitz pair CDD poles |
| Notable awards |
|
Richard Henry Dalitz, FRS (28 February 1925 – 13 January 2006) was an Australian physicist known for his work in particle physics.
Born in the town of Dimboola, Victoria, Dalitz studied physics and mathematics at Melbourne University before moving to the United Kingdom in 1946, to study at the University of Cambridge. His PhD was awarded in 1950 for research on zero-zero transitions in the atomic nucleus supervised by Nicholas Kemmer.
After his PhD, he took up a one-year post at the University of Bristol, and then joined Rudolf Peierls' group at University of Birmingham. Dalitz moved to Cornell University in 1953. He then became a professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago from 1956 to 1963. Next, he moved to the University of Oxford as a Royal Society research professor, although keeping a connection with Chicago until 1966. He retired in 1990.
At Birmingham he completed his thesis demonstrating that the electrically neutral pion could decay into a photon and an electron-positron pair, now known as a Dalitz pair. In addition, he is known for other key developments in particle physics: the Dalitz plot and the Castillejo–Dalitz–Dyson (CDD) poles. The Dalitz plots were discovered in 1953, while he was at Cornell.
Dalitz plots play a central role in the discovery of new particles in current high-energy physics experiments, including Higgs boson research, and are tools in exploratory efforts that might open avenues beyond the standard model.
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