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Nicola Cabibbo

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Italian physicist (1935-2010)

Nicola Cabibbo
2006 picture of Nicola Cabibbo holding a glass of water at the CKM Workshop in Nagoya, Japan.Cabibbo in 2006
Born(1935-04-10)10 April 1935
Rome, Italy
Died16 August 2010(2010-08-16) (aged 75)
Rome, Italy
Alma materSapienza University of Rome
Known forCabibbo angle
Spouse Paola Iandolo ​(m. 1962)​
Children1
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsParticle physics
Institutions
Academic advisorsBruno Touschek
Notable studentsGiorgio Parisi

Nicola Cabibbo (10 April 1935 – 16 August 2010) was an Italian physicist best known for his work on the weak interaction, particularly his introduction of the Cabibbo angle. Interested in science from a young age, he studied physics at the Sapienza University of Rome, graduating in 1958 with a thesis completed under Bruno Touschek.

Early life and education

Nicola Cabibbo was born on 10 April 1935 in Rome, Italy to Silician parents; his father, Emanuele, was a lawyer and his mother was a housewife. He was interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy from an early age, and built his own radios. Despite growing up during World War II, his elementary school education ran uninterrupted, and he subsequently attended the Liceo Torquato Tasso. There, a textbook titled What Is Mathematics? sparked Cabibbo's interest in pursuing scientific studies.

After the end of the war, Cabibbo also developed an interest in American literature and often frequented the library of the United States embassy to read and borrow books. His favourite authors were Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser and Herman Melville, but he also enjoyed science fiction and books on arctic expeditions.

Cabibbo enrolled at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1952 and graduated with a degree in physics in 1958. His thesis, which focused on weak interactions and muon decay, was completed under the supervision of Bruno Touschek and was done in collaboration with fellow students Francesco Calogero and Paolo Guidoni.

Career

After graduating, Cabibbo began working for the Rome Division of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. Two years later, in 1960, he was hired at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, becoming the first theoretical physicist stationed there.

In 1963, while working at CERN, Cabibbo found the solution to the puzzle of the weak decays of strange particles, formulating what came to be known as Cabibbo universality. In 1967 Nicola settled back in Rome where he taught theoretical physics and created a large school. He was president of the INFN from 1983 to 1992, during which time the Gran Sasso Laboratory was inaugurated. He was also president of the Italian energy agency, ENEA, from 1993 to 1998, and was president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1993 until his death. In 2004, Cabibbo spent a year at CERN as guest professor, joining the NA48/2 collaboration.

Research

The Cabibbo angle represents the rotation of the mass eigenstate vector space formed by the mass eigenstates | d ⟩ ,   | s ⟩ {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {|d\rangle ,\ |s\rangle }} into the weak eigenstate vector space formed by the weak eigenstates | d ′ ⟩ ,   | s ′ ⟩ {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {|d^{\prime }\rangle ,\ |s^{\prime }\rangle }} . The rotation angle is θC = 13.04°.
Nicola Cabibbo and Makoto Kobayashi

Cabibbo's major work on the weak interaction originated from a need to explain two observed phenomena:

Cabibbo addressed these issues, following Murray Gell-Mann and Maurice Lévy, by postulating weak universality, which involves a similarity in the weak interaction coupling strength between different generations of particles. He addressed the second issue with a mixing angle θC (now called the Cabibbo angle), between the down and strange quarks. Modern measurements show that θC = 13.04°.

Before the discovery of the third generation of quarks, this work was extended by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa to the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix. In 2008, Kobayashi and Maskawa shared one half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Some physicists had bitter feelings that the Nobel Prize committee failed to reward Cabibbo for his vital part. Asked for a reaction on the prize, Cabibbo preferred to give no comment. According to sources close to him, however, he was embittered.

Later, Cabibbo researched applications of supercomputers to address problems in modern physics with the experiments APE 100 and APE 1000.

Cabibbo supported attempts to rehabilitate executed Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, citing the apologies on Galileo Galilei as a possible model to correct the historical wrongs done by the Church.

After his death in 2011, the Franklin Institute awarded him with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.

Personal life and death

In 1962, Cabibbo married Paola Iandolo, who became a professor of North American literature at the University of Salerno and then of American Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome. The couple had one son, Andrea, who was born in 1966 and is a molecular biologist. Cabibbo died on August 16, 2020 at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Rome, at the age of 75, after having been admitted for a respiratory failure. He had been suffering from a tumour for several years.

See also

Notes

  1. Giorgio Salvini, director of the Frascati laboratories at the time, thought it was necessary to have a theoretical research group to support the laboratories' experimental activities.

References

  1. ^ Gariboldi, Leonardo (2015). "Cabibbo, Nicola". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani. Archived from the original on 31 May 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2024.
  2. ^ Parisi, Giorgio (2013). "Cabibbo, Nicola". Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero: Scienze (in Italian). Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani. Archived from the original on 16 November 2022. Retrieved 16 October 2024.
  3. ^ Perricone 1999, p. 6.
  4. ^ Perricone 1999, p. 7.
  5. ^ Oppedisano, Chiara. "Nicola Cabibbo nasce il 10 Aprile del 1935". ScienzaPerTutti. Vita da Genio (in Italian). Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. Archived from the original on 29 February 2024. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
  6. Maiani, Luciano (2010). "Obituary: Nicola Cabibbo (1935–2010)". Nature. 467 (7313): 284. Bibcode:2010Natur.467..284M. doi:10.1038/467284a. PMID 20844530. S2CID 205058805.
  7. Altarelli, Maiani & Petronzio 2010.
  8. Introduced by Murray Gell-Mann and Maurice Lévy, in M. Gell-Mann, M. Lévy (1960). "The Axial Vector Current in Beta Decay". Il Nuovo Cimento. 16 (4): 705–726. Bibcode:1960NCim...16..705G. doi:10.1007/BF02859738. S2CID 122945049.and referenced by Cabbibo in his paper
  9. 闫同民 (2013). "与2008年诺贝尔物理奖失之交臂的物理学家". 物理双月刊. 35: 354–357. Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
  10. Valerie Jamieson (7 October 2008). "Physics Nobel snubs key researcher". New Scientist. Retrieved 6 November 2009.
  11. "Overlooked for the Nobel: Nicola Cabibbo". Physics World. 1 October 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  12. "Nobel, l'amarezza dei fisici italiani" (in Italian). Corriere della Sera. 7 October 2008. Retrieved 6 November 2009.
  13. "Un scientifique évoque la réhabilitation d'un théologien brûlé pour hérésie" (in French). Archived from the original on 30 May 2009.
  14. "Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics". Franklin Institute. 2011. Archived from the original on 29 July 2012. Retrieved 23 December 2011.
  15. "Nicola Cabibbo" (in Italian). Sapienza University of Rome. Archived from the original on 6 December 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2024.
  16. "Morto il fisico Cabibbo Gli fu negato il Nobel". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Rome. 19 August 2010. Archived from the original on 21 August 2023. Retrieved 16 August 2010.

Sources

External links

Catholic Church titles
Preceded byGiovanni Battista Marini Bettòlo Marconi President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
6 April 1993 – 16 August 2010 		Succeeded byWerner Arber
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