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On July 15, 1918,
in Lethbridge, Ontario, Bretram N. Brockhouse was born. A few
years later, in the 1920's, Bert's family moved to Vancouver owning and
opperating a rooming house in the West End of Vancouver.
Ever since
Bert was a youth he was a modest, honest, absent minded, kind, opionated
and responsible person. When his family moved in the 1920's, he took
on a paper route to contribute to his family's income. He liked fishing
and hanging out with his buddies. He also enjoyed fooling around
with radios a lot. He spent time hanging out in radio repair shops
and making home-made radios from designs from popular electronics magazines,
which gave him the idea for his first job when out of high school as a
radio repair in 1935. These skills of repairing radios came
in handy when World War II came along for he was an electronic technician
in the Canadian Naval Reserve.
In 1950, Bert
attended The University of Toronto studying Physics. In 1951,
he recieved his PhD in Physics. Fresh out of University with his
PhD, Bert moved to Chalk River, Ontario and worked at the Canadian Atomic
Energy Project for the National Research Council as a researcher perfecting
neutron spectroscopes and their applications. One night at his boss's,
Donald Hurst, house, both were reading a 1944 term paper about neutrons.
He found many new interesting theories in the term paper and decided to
some experiments at the labratory at Chalk River to try out these new theories.
Bert then picked up a and began to construct some math equations for these
new theories. A while later, Bert went to Hurst and shown him the
mathematical equations that he came up with on a blackboard. The
equations described a device that would use a neutron beam as a kind of
flashlight taht could look into the mysteries of crystalline structures
and other solids such as metals, minerals, gems and rocks. Brockhouse
went on to solve the problems of controling the source of neutron beam;
limiting it to neutrons for only one energy; eliminating background radiation
from other experiments; and problems with the sensitivity of the detectors.
This in time resulted in the Tripple - Axis Neutron Spectrometer,
in 1952, which is now used worldwide to investigate crystal structures.
Like many
physicists, Bert Brockhouse liked to explore metaphysical ideas oor the
spiritual world. He was a religious man whio's beliefs in physics
theory reflected with his belief in religion. He quotes "Science
is an act of faith. Without faith, how can understanding the existance
of a neutron help with the larger moral issues of life." Brockhouse's
example of a moral problem is "Kantian Doom"-- this is the idea that we
are doomed because even though we know that something is bad for us, we
do it anyway because everybody is doing it, for example driving cars, using
computers or watching TV.
Over Brockhouse's
long life time, he has achieved many outstanding awards, especially the
Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1994 for developing the Tripple - Axis Neutron
Spectrometer. In attending university, he recieved his degrees B.Sc.
(Physics & Math) in 1947 at the University of British Columbia(UBC)
and in 1950 he got his PhD on physics at the University of Toronto.
He recieved other awards including:
>Tory Medal of the Royal Society of Canada
>Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society
>Duddell Medal and Prize of the British Institute of Physics and Physical
Society
>Centennial Medal of Canada
>Fellow of Royal Sociey of Canada
>Officer of the Order of Canada
>Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Acamedy
>1994 Nobel Prize in Physics
In 1962, Bert Brockhouse moved to
McMaster University where he served as a professor of Physics and in 1967
to 1970 he became the Chairman of the department until his retirement in
1984. Bert has influenced many people and students including a few
of his own graduate students, S.H. Chen, J.M. Rowe, and E.C. Svensson.
His graduate students went on to develop new spectromerers at the McMaster
Nuclear Reactor and later at the Chalk River NRC Reactor. Today,
Brockhouse spends his time at his home in Ancestor, Ontario with his wife
Dorris where he studies the philosophy of science for a past time, and
spending time visiting with friends and family members.
Works Cited
GSU. Profiles: Bertram Brockhouse. <http://www.science.ca/scientists/Brockhouse/brockhouse.html>
Bertran Neville Brockhouse. <http://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/people/faculty/Brockhouse_BN.html>
Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. Ver.1.0. 1997
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1997