Historical reconstruction and personal recollections in the Memoirs of Dilworth/Occhialini

Pasquale Tucci

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arXiv · 2302.03316

Historical reconstruction and personal recollections in the Memoirs of Dilworth/Occhialini

Pasquale Tucci

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Abstract

The folder containing the sheets of the Memoirs of Dilworth/Occhialini is kept in the Dilworth-Occhialini Archives at the BICF Library of the University of Milan. They cover the two English periods of Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao Occhialini (1907-1993): in Cambridge between 1931 and 1934 and in Bristol between 1945 and 1948. The Memoirs were written between an unspecified day in 1992 and April 16, 1993. They do not have the organic form of a historical reconstruction but are recollections and clarifications of Occhialini about some aspects of his activity, neglected by both historians and his colleagues, primarily Powell. Constance Dilworth (1924-2004) was the driving force. In Occhialini's considerations, references to specific dates or documents are often missing. In my contribution, after briefly describing the contents of the Memoirs, I will focus my attention on Occhialini's claim to have been instrumental in improving photographic plates provided by Ilford in the 1945, without Powell ever having acknowledged the importance of the suggestion. Keywords: History of cosmic rays, Occhialini, Dilworth, Blackett, Powell, Rutherford, Heisenberg, Rosbaud, Houtermans.

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Pasquale Tucci. 2023-02-07. Historical reconstruction and personal recollections in the Memoirs of Dilworth/Occhialini. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.03316

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