Interdisciplinary Laboratory Seminar

[Emanuele Tuillier Illingworth]

In the framework of the activity of the Sector /Physics: history and 
epistemology /of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of SISSA,

Prof. Luisa Bonolis

will deliver a lecture on

BRUNO ROSSI AND COSMIC RAYS.

FROM EARTH LABORATORIES TO PHYSICS IN SPACE

on October 13, 2009 – 2.30 p.m.**

Room D – Main Building

SISSA

Abstract

Bruno Rossi is one of the fathers of modern physics, a pioneer in 
virtually every aspect of what is today called high-energy astrophysics. 
At the beginning of 1930s he was the pioneer of cosmic ray research in 
Italy and he witnessed the birth of particle physics. While cosmic ray 
physics moved more and more towards astrophysics, Rossi continued to be 
one of the inspirers of this line of research. When outer space became a 
reality, he did not hesitate to leap into a new scientific dimension, 
which soon revealed its extraordinary richness. Rossi's intuition on the 
importance of exploiting new technological windows to look at the 
universe with new eyes is a fundamental key to understand the profound 
unity which guided his scientific research path up to its culminating 
moments at the beginning of 1960s, when his group at MIT demonstrated 
the existence of the solar wind, and when he promoted the search for 
extra-solar sources of X rays. A visionary idea which eventually led to 
the breakthrough experiment which discovered Scorpius X-1, and 
inaugurated X-ray astronomy.

Claudia Parma
Segreteria Didattica - Laboratorio Interdisciplinare
SISSA - Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste
tel. +39 0403787401 - fax. +39 040 3787563