Lyman G. Parratt

Last updated

Lyman G. Parratt (May 17, 1908 - June 29, 1995) was an American physicist. He is known for various research using x-rays. [1]

Parratt was born in Salt Lake City.

In 1954, Parratt used x-rays to explore the surface of copper-coated glass, thereby creating the field of X-ray reflectometry. [2]

He died in Redmond, Oregon, aged 87.

See also

Related Research Articles

The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enrico Fermi</span> Italian-American physicist (1901–1954)

Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Moseley</span> English physicist

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics was the justification from physical laws of the previous empirical and chemical concept of the atomic number. This stemmed from his development of Moseley's law in X-ray spectra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X-ray</span> Form of short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation

An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (3×1016 Hz to 3×1019 Hz) and energies in the range 145 eV to 124 keV. X-ray wavelengths are shorter than those of UV rays and typically longer than those of gamma rays. In many languages, X-radiation is referred to as Röntgen radiation, after the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered it on November 8, 1895. He named it X-radiation to signify an unknown type of radiation. Spellings of X-ray(s) in English include the variants x-ray(s), xray(s), and X ray(s). The most familiar use of X-rays is checking for fractures (broken bones), but X-rays are also used in other ways. For example, chest X-rays can spot pneumonia. Mammograms use X-rays to look for breast cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radiography</span> Imaging technique using ionizing and non-ionizing radiation

Radiography is an imaging technique using X-rays, gamma rays, or similar ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation to view the internal form of an object. Applications of radiography include medical radiography and industrial radiography. Similar techniques are used in airport security. To create an image in conventional radiography, a beam of X-rays is produced by an X-ray generator and is projected toward the object. A certain amount of the X-rays or other radiation is absorbed by the object, dependent on the object's density and structural composition. The X-rays that pass through the object are captured behind the object by a detector. The generation of flat two dimensional images by this technique is called projectional radiography. In computed tomography an X-ray source and its associated detectors rotate around the subject which itself moves through the conical X-ray beam produced. Any given point within the subject is crossed from many directions by many different beams at different times. Information regarding attenuation of these beams is collated and subjected to computation to generate two dimensional images in three planes which can be further processed to produce a three dimensional image.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Parratt</span> English organist and composer

Sir Walter Parratt was an English organist and composer.

Medical physics deals with the application of the concepts and methods of physics to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases with a specific goal of improving human health and well-being. Since 2008, medical physics has been included as a health profession according to International Standard Classification of Occupation of the International Labour Organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Bragg</span> Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer

Sir William Lawrence Bragg, was an Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer, discoverer (1912) of Bragg's law of X-ray diffraction, which is basic for the determination of crystal structure. He was joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915, "For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays"; an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Val Logsdon Fitch</span> American nuclear physicist

Val Logsdon Fitch was an American nuclear physicist who, with co-researcher James Cronin, was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of K-mesons, that a reaction run in reverse does not retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the reactions of subatomic particles are not indifferent to time. Thus the phenomenon of CP violation was discovered. This demolished the faith that physicists had that natural laws were governed by symmetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kai Siegbahn</span> Swedish physicist (1918–2007)

Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manne Siegbahn</span> Swedish physicist

Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn FRS(For) HFRSE was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G. N. Ramachandran</span> Indian physicist (1922–2001)

Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran, or G.N. Ramachandran, FRS was an Indian physicist who was known for his work that led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure. He was the first to propose a triple-helical model for the structure of collagen. He subsequently went on to make other major contributions in biology and physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giuseppe Occhialini</span> Italian physicist, who contributed to the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay

Giuseppe Paolo Stanislao "Beppo" Occhialini ForMemRS was an Italian physicist who contributed to the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in 1947 with César Lattes and Cecil Frank Powell, the latter winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. At the time of this discovery, they were all working at the H. H. Wills Laboratory of the University of Bristol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X-ray reflectivity</span>

X-ray reflectivity is a surface-sensitive analytical technique used in chemistry, physics, and materials science to characterize surfaces, thin films and multilayers. It is a form of reflectometry based on the use of X-rays and is related to the techniques of neutron reflectometry and ellipsometry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron reflectometry</span>

Neutron reflectometry is a neutron diffraction technique for measuring the structure of thin films, similar to the often complementary techniques of X-ray reflectivity and ellipsometry. The technique provides valuable information over a wide variety of scientific and technological applications including chemical aggregation, polymer and surfactant adsorption, structure of thin film magnetic systems, biological membranes, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Guinier</span> French physicist

André Guinier was a French physicist who did important work in the field of X-ray diffraction and solid-state physics. He worked at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, then taught at the University of Paris and later at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, where he co-founded the Laboratory of Solid State Physics. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1971 and won the Gregori Aminoff Prize in 1985.

Luigi Puccianti was an Italian physicist.

Günther Porod was an Austrian physicist.

Parratt is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Florin Abelès was a French physicist, specialized in optics.

References