Life and work
Helmut Paul was born in 1929 as child of Hans and Ilona Paul (née Just) in Vienna. Both parents were of middle class origin. The father was employed in the accounting and financial sector of the Siemens company, [1] the mother worked first in the household and later as an interpreter in the American Embassy in Vienna.
Helmut Paul was an excellent pupil, and it became soon apparent that he was gifted in mathematics. He received his secondary education (Gymnasium) partly in Berlin, partly in Gmunden, Upper Austria, and got his Matura (Abitur) in Vienna in 1947. Paul began the study of physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna in the fall of 1947. Among his professors in mathematics were the world-renowned mathematicians Johann Radon and Edmund Hlawka; there were friendly private relations to Radon and his family. Among his professors in physics in Vienna were Hans Thirring, Felix Ehrenhaft and later the nuclear physicist Berta Karlik.
Paul spent the year 1950/51 with a fellowship from the US State Department at the Graduate School of Purdue University in Lafayette, USA. [1] Paul wrote a master's thesis on the efficiency of Geiger counters and received at the conclusion of this academic year the degree of Master of Science. The supervisor of this thesis, Professor Rolf M. Steffen, told Paul that he would gladly be willing to supervise Paul's doctoral studies.
Already in spring 1952, Paul was back at Purdue University, this time for doctoral studies (Ph.D.), which he concluded in December 1954 with a thesis "On the attenuation of the angular correlation of gamma rays resulting from the decay of the 181Ta nucleus by time varying fields in liquid solutions". [2] After returning to Vienna, Paul obtained a half time position at the Institute for Radium Research, Vienna, of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, which was directed by Professor Karlik. This employment was of great significance for Paul privately as well: He met the secretary of Professor Karlik, Maria Elisabeth Mathis (1931 - 2008), and fell in love with her. [1] Helmut Paul und Elisabeth Mathis got engaged in December 1956; the wedding took place in June 1957. In time, three children came from this marriage.
In October 1957, Paul took on a Ford Foundation fellowship at CERN in Geneva which Berta Karlik hat procured for him. At CERN, the first particle accelerator, the synchrocyclotron, had just started operation, and Paul got the chance to work on the first experiment that was carried out with this machine. [2] It consisted of the search for the rare decay of the charged pion into an electron and a neutrino, which was indeed found to occur with a probability of 0.012% relative to the normal decay into muon and neutrino. [3] [4] After two very fruitful years in Geneva, Paul went a third time to Purdue, this time as a visiting professor, supplying for Professor Steffen. There he studied a beta-gamma angular correlation. [1] [5] In the meantime, a new nuclear research center was established in Seibersdorf near Vienna, where close colleagues from the Radium Institute (Rupert Patzelt) and the 2nd Physics Institute of Vienna University (Peter Weinzierl) were active. Weinzierl offered him a position in Seibersdorf, und Paul accepted. [2] Paul was employed at the Seibersdorf center from October 1960 to March 1971, interrupted by a fourth stay in the USA, this time at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island (1965/66).
In Seibersdorf, Paul had a magnetic intermediate-image beta ray spectrometer at his disposal. With it, he measured the shapes of beta ray spectra. Above all, he investigated the spectrometer itself, in order to show that the measured shapes are not due to distortions produced by the apparatus. [6] An essential part of his work was devoted to the measurement of the electron-neutrino angular correlation in neutron decay, a difficult project that went on for years and was finally concluded when Paul was no longer at Seibersdorf. [7] [8] In Brookhaven, Paul attempted to find a possible parity admixture in an excited state of a radioactive hafnium isotope, which would manifest itself by a small circular polarization of the emitted gamma radiation. The result was negative: there was no circular polarization. [9] While at Brookhaven, Paul also published a summarizing article on the shapes of beta spectra which he had already begun at Seibersdorf. [10] In 1970, Paul received a call to the young University of Social Sciences, Economics and Business in Linz (from 1975: Johannes Kepler University of Linz) for the newly established chair of Experimental Physics. Paul had the chance to cooperate in the planning of his professorship even prior to beginning his office. Since no chair for experimental physics had existed before, everything had to be built up from scratch (teaching, laboratories, electronics, mechanical workshop).
Paul started his professorship on 1 April 1971. Soon an electrostatic particle accelerator for 700 keV protons was installed (later also a tandem accelerator), und in collaboration with O. Benka, D. Semrad, A. Kropf and others, atomic physics experiments were started. To make the Linz group internationally known, Paul started to organize international workshops: at first three on theories of ionisation of inner atomic shells. [11] [12] [13] A table of cross sections for K shell ionisation by light ions, established together with J. Muhr and O. Bolik, resp., is available in the Internet. [14] Later, Paul's interests turned toward the stopping power of matter for charged particles, a subject on which D. Semrad, P. Bauer, R. Golser and other coworkers had already worked intensively for some time. He initiated again three international workshops on this theme. [15] [16] [17] In Juli 1995, Paul's group initiated the Sixteenth International Conference on Atomic Collisions in Solids in Linz, with Paul as Chairman; D. Semrad, P. Bauer and O. Benka were editors of the conference volume. [18] The years in Linz were a very successful time for Paul. Apart from teaching and research, Paul's managing qualities were appreciated and asked for. Paul's equilibrated and confidence-inspiring personality [1] contributed to the fact that Paul became a Senator at the University as early as 1972. In 1973 he was elected Dean of the newly established Faculty of natural and technical sciences, and in 1974 there came the election to the office of the Rector of the university for three years until 1977. In 1985, he was again elected Dean for two years.
Paul's interest (as professor emeritus since 1996) now turned also to themes of medical physics. [19] [20] He was co-author of several reports of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) [21] and of a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency. [22] Even after his retirement from active university duty in 1996, Paul received invitations to specialized conferences abroad, notably to the USA (last time 2012), but also to Brazil (2011).
In 1990, Paul began to establish a collection of all published Stopping Power Data for light Ions, with many graphical displays, and to install it in the Internet. [23] In the meantime he has extended this collection to all positive ions, and he kept it updated till his death. It was important to him to compare these data statistically with various theories, in order to judge the quality of the data (and of the theories). [24] His private interests included extended travels, the participation in a church choir and work on the genealogy of his family. [25]
A neutrino is a fermion that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero. The rest mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles. The weak force has a very short range, the gravitational interaction is extremely weak due to the very small mass of the neutrino, and neutrinos do not participate in the electromagnetic interaction or the strong interaction. Thus, neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.
Particle radiation is the radiation of energy by means of fast-moving subatomic particles. Particle radiation is referred to as a particle beam if the particles are all moving in the same direction, similar to a light beam.
A beta particle, also called beta ray or beta radiation, is a high-energy, high-speed electron or positron emitted by the radioactive decay of an atomic nucleus during the process of beta decay. There are two forms of beta decay, β− decay and β+ decay, which produce electrons and positrons respectively.
Electron capture is a process in which the proton-rich nucleus of an electrically neutral atom absorbs an inner atomic electron, usually from the K or L electron shells. This process thereby changes a nuclear proton to a neutron and simultaneously causes the emission of an electron neutrino.
Radioactive decay is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered radioactive. Three of the most common types of decay are alpha, beta, and gamma decay. The weak force is the mechanism that is responsible for beta decay, while the other two are governed by the electromagnetism and nuclear force.
Ionizing radiation, including nuclear radiation, consists of subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that have sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules by detaching electrons from them. Some particles can travel up to 99% of the speed of light, and the electromagnetic waves are on the high-energy portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Internal conversion is an atomic decay process where an excited nucleus interacts electromagnetically with one of the orbital electrons of an atom. This causes the electron to be emitted (ejected) from the atom. Thus, in internal conversion, a high-energy electron is emitted from the excited atom, but not from the nucleus. For this reason, the high-speed electrons resulting from internal conversion are not called beta particles, since the latter come from beta decay, where they are newly created in the nuclear decay process.
The Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment was conducted by physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines in 1956. The experiment confirmed the existence of neutrinos. Neutrinos, subatomic particles with no electric charge and very small mass, had been conjectured to be an essential particle in beta decay processes in the 1930s. With neither mass nor charge, such particles appeared to be impossible to detect. The experiment exploited a huge flux of electron antineutrinos emanating from a nearby nuclear reactor and a detector consisting of large tanks of water. Neutrino interactions with the protons of the water were observed, verifying the existence and basic properties of this particle for the first time.
In nuclear physics, double beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which two neutrons are simultaneously transformed into two protons, or vice versa, inside an atomic nucleus. As in single beta decay, this process allows the atom to move closer to the optimal ratio of protons and neutrons. As a result of this transformation, the nucleus emits two detectable beta particles, which are electrons or positrons.
In nuclear physics, the internal conversion coefficient describes the rate of internal conversion.
Double electron capture is a decay mode of an atomic nucleus. For a nuclide (A, Z) with a number of nucleons A and atomic number Z, double electron capture is only possible if the mass of the nuclide (A, Z−2) is lower.
Maurice Goldhaber was an American physicist, who in 1957 established that neutrinos have negative helicity.
ASTRA was a type of nuclear research reactor built in Seibersdorf, Austria near Vienna, at the site of the former Austrian Reactor Center Seibersdorf which now forms part of the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). ASTRA operated from 1960 to 1999.
In spectroscopy, a forbidden mechanism is a spectral line associated with absorption or emission of photons by atomic nuclei, atoms, or molecules which undergo a transition that is not allowed by a particular selection rule but is allowed if the approximation associated with that rule is not made. For example, in a situation where, according to usual approximations, the process cannot happen, but at a higher level of approximation the process is allowed but at a low rate.
In dosimetry, linear energy transfer (LET) is the amount of energy that an ionizing particle transfers to the material traversed per unit distance. It describes the action of radiation into matter.
Herwig Franz Schopper is a German experimental physicist. He was the director general of CERN from 1981 to 1988.
Ivan Aničin, was Yugoslav and Serbian nuclear physicist, particle physicist, astrophysicist, and cosmologist, university Full Professor and Distinguished (teaching/research) Professor of scientific institutes in Belgrade (Serbia), Bristol, Grenoble (France), and Munich (Germany).
The Nucifer Experiment is a proposed test of equipment and methodologies for using neutrino detection for the monitoring of nuclear reactor activity and the assessment of the isotopic composition of reactor fuels for non-proliferation treaty compliance monitoring. Based upon an idea proposed by L.A. Mikaélyan in 1977, the Nucifer Experiment was proposed to the IAEA in October 2008.
Yuri G. Zdesenko ; 6 October 1943 – 1 September 2004, was a Ukrainian nuclear physicist known for a significant contribution to investigations of double beta decay.
Pavel P. Povinec is Professor of Physics at Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of the Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia). Head of the Centre for Nuclear and Accelerator Technologies (CENTA)
