Bruno Touschek in Glasgow. The making of a theoretical physicist

Abstract

In the history of the discovery tools of last century particle physics, central stage is taken by elementary particle accelerators and in particular by colliders. In their start and early development, a major role was played by the Austrian born Bruno Touschek, who proposed and built the first electron positron collider, AdA, in Italy, in 1960. In this note, we present a period of Touschek's life barely explored in the literature, namely the five years he spent at University of Glasgow, first to obtain his doctorate in 1949 and then as a lecturer. We shall highlight his formation as a theoretical physicist, his contacts and correspondence with Werner Heisenberg in Göttingen and Max Born in Edinburgh, as well as his close involvement with colleagues intent on building modern particle accelerators in Glasgow, Malvern, Manchester and Birmingham. We shall discuss how the Fuchs affair, which unraveled in early 1950, may have influenced his decision to leave the UK, and how contacts with the Italian physicist Bruno Ferretti led Touschek to join the Guglielmo

Bruno Touschek (1921–1978). The Path to Electron-Positron Collisions

“…Deeply aware of Touschek's potential, which was particularly suited to such ambitious plans, Edoardo Amaldi invited him officially in Rome with an INFN contract. 10 At the end of 1952, when Touschek arrived in Italy, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics had just been founded with first president Bernardini and Italian physicists were deciding to establish a national laboratory for high energy physics in order to host an electron synchrotron, a new-generation machine they had planned to build as a powerful tool for elementary particle physics. The direction of the project was given to the 33-year-old Giorgio Salvini.…”

“…As emphasized by his son Francis, Touschek had always a special relationship with Amaldi, who showed his affection and esteem by writing with great commitment an accurate biography after Touschek's death[10].…”