Bruno Rossi - Honors

Physicist, born in Venice, NE Italy. In 1940 he became professor of physics at Cornell University. His work includes the study of cosmic rays, showing primary rays to be positively charged particles, and the development of X-ray astronomy.

Rossi

Born	13 April 1905 Venice
Died	21 November 1993 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Institution	Florence Padua Copenhagen Manchester Chicago Cornell Manhattan Project MIT
Alma Mater	Bologna
Notable Prizes	National Medal of Science (1983) Wolf Prize (1987)

Bruno B. He made major contributions to cosmic ray and particle physics from 1930 through the 1950s, and pioneered X-ray astronomy and space plasma physics in the 1960s. There, in addition to teaching and research, Rossi planned the new Physics Institute of the University and oversaw its construction. During the war Rossi worked first as consultant on radar development at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then at Los Alamos as co-director of the Detector Group responsible for development of instrumentation for experiments that supported the development of the atomic bombs.

In the fall of 1946 Rossi was appointed professor of physics at MIT where he established the Cosmic Ray Group to investigate the nature and origins of cosmic rays and the properties of the sub-nuclear particles produced in the interaction of cosmic rays with matter. In the late 1950s, when particle accelerator experiments had come to dominate experimental particle physics, Rossi turned his attention to exploratory research made possible by the new availability of space vehicles.

Honors

Awards

Wolf Prize in Physics for his role in the development of X-ray astronomy (1987) National Medal of Science (1983) Rumford Prize award of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for "discoveries concerning the nature and origins of cosmic radiations" (1976) Gold Medal of the Italian Physical Society (1970) Honorary doctorates from the universities of Palermo, Durham, and Chicago

Named after him

Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a NASA satellite X-ray observatory Bruno Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society There is an endowed chair named in honor of Bruno Rossi at MIT.