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

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the Memoirs of Occhialini, highlighting personal recollections and historical details about his scientific activities in the 1930s and 1940s, with a focus on overlooked contributions and archival insights.

Contribution

It provides a detailed examination of Occhialini's Memoirs, emphasizing previously neglected aspects of his scientific life and clarifying his role in photographic plate improvements.

Findings

Occhialini's claim of improving photographic plates in 1945.

The Memoirs contain personal recollections not previously documented.

Highlighting Occhialini's overlooked contributions to cosmic ray research.

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.