From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Sun Jul 23 2000 - 08:49:59 MDT
scerir wrote:
A good introduction to the neutrino (little neutron) physics ...
Damien Broderick wrote:
More trivial quibbles: `Little neutral one' is how the translation goes in
English. `Little lepton' makes more sense, since it's precisely *not* any
kind of quarkish critter. :)
Yes *little lepton* makes more sense.
Bruno Pontecorvo wrote (in *Enrico Fermi v vospominanijakh uchenikov i
druzej*, 1972, Moskva) the strange story of the name *neutrino*.
At that time he was in Rome, with E. Fermi, E. Majorana, F. Rasetti, E.
Segré, E. Amaldi.
Initially they (and also Pauli) called the neutrino *neutron*.
Rutherford said that this name was wrong because *he* was using the term
*neutron* for the *heavy one*.
In october 1931, in Rome, during the Conference for Nuclear Physics, Fermi
suggested the term *Pauli particle* but Bohr said that the neutrino was a
ghost or worse (he did not like the energy conservation principle!).
So E. Fermi suggested the term *little neutron* or, in italian, *neutrino*.
Franco Rasetti wrote the same story in *Nauchnye trudy*, Nauka, Moskva,
1972.
Pontecorvo says also that, during 1934, Fermi wrote the very famous article
about the beta-decay, for Nature (letters to Nature). But Nature did not
publish it (.... was too speculative and not interesting at all ....).
scerir
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