| Date | Text | |
|---|---|---|
05 Feb 2015
Val Logsdon Fitch |
death Val Logsdon Fitch Died 5 Feb 2015 at age 91 (born 10 Mar 1923). American particle physicist who was corecipient with James Watson Cronin of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1980 for an experiment conducted in 1964 that disproved the long-held theory that particle interaction should be indifferent to the direction of time. Working with Leo James Rainwater, Fitch had been the first to observe radiation from muonic atoms; i.e., from species in which a muon is orbiting a nucleus rather than an electron. This work indicated that the sizes of atomic nuclei were smaller than had been supposed. He went on to study kaons and in 1964 began his collaboration with James Cronin, James Christenson, and René Turley which led to the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons. |
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22 Jun 2015
Donald Featherstone |
death Donald Featherstone Died 22 Jun 2015 at age 79 (born 25 Jan 1936). American artist who designed the original plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament, at age 21, having just graduated from Worcester Art Museum School. His first project was a plastic lawn duck for the plastic products manufacturer, Union Products of Leominster, Massachussetts (founded 1946). His second was the flamingo, originated in Sep 1957. He first fashioned it out of clay, based on photos in the National Geographic magazine. They were manufactured by the millions for nearly a half-century, but in 2006, Union Products ceased production, ending business, bankrupt. The rights to the flamingo design and the molds were bought by HMC International LLC which subcontracted Cado Manufacturing to make them. Featherstone designed over 750 different items before he retired from Union Products in 2000. |
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