Born: July 15, 1918
Died: October 13, 2003 Place of Birth: Lethbridge, Alberta
Major Notes:
Bert Brockhouse shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics and is considered one of the world's greatest scientists.
When he was only eight, his family moved from Lethbridge to Vancouver where they operated a rooming house.
After Brockhouse had finished high school, the family moved to Chicago in 1935.
He had an interest in singing and radios and, while taking night school courses, worked for a small electronics firm where he learned to build radios.
In 1938, the family moved again back to Vancouver where Brockhouse joined the Canadian Navy.
In the Navy, he was able to further his education at the Nova Scotia Technical College.
When he left the Navy near the end of World War II, Brockhouse attended the University of British Columbia and completed a BA program in Math and Physics.
By 1950, he had completed his MA and Doctorate programs at the University of Toronto.
Brockhouse found employment at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories under the supervison of D.G. Hurst.
Hurst wanted Brockhouse to join their project to conduct some neutron scattering experiments.
For the next decade or so, Brockhouse did various experiments with neutron beams and studied neutron scattering.
He developed several types of neutron spectrometers, continually trying to improve their functions, until eventually he designed what he called a Triple-Axis Crystal Spectrometer.
Brockhouse founded a means of studying atoms not just by seeing them but by hearing them.
It was this 1958 discovery that he was awarded the Nobel Prize, sharing it with Clifford Shull in US who was using a slightly different neutron scattering technique.
Bertram Brockhouse exemplified the importance of careful specific research in science.
He was made a Companion in the Order of Canada, the highest award given to a Canadian in Canada.
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