Nobel Prize to Blackett

The highest honor in physics, the Nobel prize, was awarded for 1948 to Patrick M. S. Blackett for his work in perfecting the Wilson cloud chamber to detect cosmic radiation. Like Arne Tiselius, the Swedish professor who won the 1948 chemistry prize for developing the electrophoretic method of protein study (involving the movement through a solution of large molecules in an electric field), Blackett was recognized for his mastery of technique. But his hypothesis, announced in 1947, that every large rotating body is a magnet—an assumption based on astronomical observations—marks him a theoretician as well.