{"id":541639,"date":"2025-01-31T11:09:52","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T14:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=541639"},"modified":"2025-02-10T09:50:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T12:50:39","slug":"the-physicist-who-saw-a-bigger-picture-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-physicist-who-saw-a-bigger-picture-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The physicist who saw a bigger picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 11 of this year marks the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the birth of physicist Cesare Mansueto Giulio Lattes (1924\u20132005). Born in Curitiba to a wealthy immigrant couple from northwestern Italy, C\u00e9sar Lattes, as he was best known, was a unique character in Brazilian science. While living in the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, he managed to stand out from a very young age among a generation of brilliant physicists and mathematicians trained at the newly founded University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) in the 1930s and 1940s, including Marcello Damy (1914\u20132009), M\u00e1rio Schenberg (1914\u20131990), and Oscar Sala (1922\u20132010).<\/p>\n

The work he conducted shortly after the end of the Second World War advanced two related fields that use different approaches to study the origin and role of subatomic (smaller than an atom) particles: research on cosmic rays that reach Earth and particle (accelerator) physics.<\/p>\n

See more:<\/strong>
\n– A major contribution<\/a><\/div>\n

As an investigator of the tiny world hidden inside the atom, he proposed an improvement to nuclear emulsions, a special type of photographic plate used to detect fleeting subatomic particles that last for only fractions of a microsecond. His idea was to increase the sensitivity of the emulsions, allowing him to see phenomena that others could not.<\/p>\n

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C\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span>C\u00e9sar Lattes (without a jacket<\/em>) poses with his brother Davide, his mother Carolina, and his father GiuseppeC\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In 1947, while working at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, Lattes co-discovered a new type of subatomic particle produced by cosmic rays hitting Earth: the pi meson (now known as a pion). The primary function of the pion is to hold the atomic nucleus together and thus prevent protons and neutrons from escaping. The improved emulsion plates made it possible to observe traces of the particles in records obtained in France and Bolivia. The following year, Lattes was the first to observe the pion itself, this time produced artificially inside a particle accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1950, the head of his former laboratory in Bristol, the British physicist Cecil Powell (1903\u20131969), won the Nobel Prize in Physics for improvements to the photographic particle detection method and identification of the pion.<\/p>\n

Although he did not receive the Nobel Prize himself, Lattes quickly gained respect and fame. His practical ingenuity led to his meteoric rise, and the research he conducted in his early career had repercussions at home and abroad. At the height of his popularity, he was a scientific celebrity in Brazil in the same mold as the public health doctors Carlos Chagas (1879\u20131934) and Oswaldo Cruz (1872\u20131917). He was the subject of a samba show and was pictured on magazine covers.<\/p>\n

With his scientific prestige, he helped found the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) in 1949 and supported the creation of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in 1951 \u2014 and he did all this before turning 27. \u201cThere is no book on the history of physics in the last century that does not mention the importance of Lattes\u2019s work with the pion,\u201d says the physics historian Olival Freire Junior of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), currently the scientific director of the CNPq. \u201cLattes is considered a genius much the same way mathematician John Nash [1928\u20132015] was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like his American colleague, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contribution to game theory, Lattes suffered from mental illness. Nash had schizophrenia, a condition that caused hallucinations and at times alienated him from reality. Lattes alternated between episodes of extreme depression and euphoria, a condition that today would likely be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. \u201cHe was hospitalized several times due to his mental health, which hindered his career. He might have done more if he had not suffered from this problem,\u201d says Antonio Augusto Passos Videira, a philosopher and science historian from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and collaborating researcher at the CBPF. \u201cBut that takes nothing away from the merit of his work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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C\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span>Portrait of Lattes aged 19 at his graduation from physics at USP in 1943C\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Lattes was an enthusiast of experimental physics and often a critic of mathematicians and theorists (Albert Einstein was one of his favorite targets throughout his life). \u201cThe only thing that matters is what you can detect or what you can infer from what you detected,\u201d he said in an unpublished interview that is part of the physicist\u2019s collection at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), the last place he worked. \u201cLattes mastered scientific know-how,\u201d explains Her\u00e1clio Duarte Tavares, a science historian from Mato Grosso State University (UNEMAT) who has been studying the physicist\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Although he was one of the first scientists to show the potential of particle accelerators for discoveries about the subatomic world, Lattes dedicated most of his career to studies of cosmic rays. This was the field in which he began and ended his scientific career.<\/p>\n

Before settling in S\u00e3o Paulo in the early 1930s, the Lattes family lived in Curitiba and Porto Alegre in addition to spending six months in Turin, Italy. In S\u00e3o Paulo, C\u00e9sar Lattes completed the equivalent of high school at Col\u00e9gio Dante Alighieri in 1938. This traditional private school founded by Italian immigrants exists to this day. Through family connections, Lattes was able to secure a place in USP\u2019s nascent undergraduate course in physics at just 15 years of age.<\/p>\n

His father Giuseppe was a foreign exchange manager at Banco Franc\u00eas e Italiano in S\u00e3o Paulo. One of his clients was Gleb Wataghin (1899\u20131986), a Ukrainian-Italian physicist who moved to S\u00e3o Paulo in 1934 to implement the physics course at USP\u2019s School of Philosophy, Sciences, Languages, and Literature (FFCL) \u2014 the predecessor of what is now the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH). The bank where Giuseppe worked was responsible for handling the salary of Wataghin, who studied cosmic rays.<\/p>\n

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University of Bristol<\/span>Members of the HH Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol, headed by Powell (sitting on the left in a suit and tie<\/em>). Lattes is fourth from the left in the second rowUniversity of Bristol<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

One day, Lattes Sr. asked the physicist if he would talk to his son, who was interested in science. The young Lattes, who had even considered becoming an elementary school teacher, spoke with Wataghin, and the two hit it off. The rules for enrolling at university were less strict at the time, and after passing several academic tests, he was accepted into the course. Another Italian account holder at the bank, Giuseppe Occhialini (1907\u20131993), who also taught physics at USP, soon became an inspiration for Lattes Jr.<\/p>\n

Lattes was a precocious talent, graduating in 1943 at the age of 19. He did not defend a doctoral thesis, but that did not hold him back. In 1948, after his discovery of the pion, USP awarded him an honorary PhD. After graduating, Lattes spent some time studying cosmic rays in field experiments with two Italian colleagues who also studied physics at USP: Ugo Camerini (1925\u20132014) and Andrea Wataghin (1926\u20131984), Gleb’s son. In 1946, he traveled to the United Kingdom and joined Occhialini, who was already conducting research with Powell’s group at the University of Bristol.<\/p>\n

It was the Italian’s second time in the UK. Between 1931 and 1934, he worked at the respected Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge\u2019s Department of Physics, which was led by Patrick Blackett (1897\u20131974) at the time. Together they helped to improve the Wilson chamber or cloud chamber, a closed container that uses supersaturated vapor to show the path of ionizing radiation, such as particles from cosmic rays. The pair used the improved device to confirm the existence of the positron, a positively charged antielectron. In 1948, Blackett alone won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. An interesting aside: during a stay in Cambridge in the mid-1920s, a young Robert Oppenheimer<\/em> (1904\u20131967), who suffered from depression, allegedly left a poisoned apple on the desk of Blackett, who was then his supervisor. Whether fictional or real, the scene appears at the beginning of the 2024 Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the American physicist who was dubbed the \u201cfather of the atomic bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Reproduction Nature | Alicia Ivanissevich<\/span>Traces left by mesons (above<\/em>) observed on photographic plates (below<\/em>) by the Bristol groupReproduction Nature | Alicia Ivanissevich<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

It was the relationship Lattes established with Occhialini at USP that made it possible for him to visit Bristol in 1946. In the UK, the Brazilian had the chance to observe nuclear emulsions exposed to cosmic rays obtained by Occhialini on a 2,800-meter mountain in the French Pyrenees called Pic du Midi. The most sensitive photographic plates seemed to capture trails produced by particles of the meson class. To be certain of his discovery, Lattes proposed a similar experiment at a higher location in the Bolivian Andes. He believed that on Mount Chacaltaya, at an altitude of 5,421 meters, the chance of recording these particles from cosmic rays with the best-suited version of the photographic plates would be much greater. He was right.<\/p>\n

However, a little-known episode almost put an early end to Lattes’s ascending career. In April 1947, on his way to Bolivia to carry out the field experiment, Lattes had to pass through Brazil. Because the trip was funded by the British, he was advised to buy a plane ticket from a state-owned company, British South American Airways (BSAA). It would be a long and tiring flight that would take more than a day. After departing from London, there were stops in Lisbon, Dakar, and Natal before arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the final destination.<\/p>\n

Lattes did not follow the advice. An official at the Brazilian embassy in London told him that the British aircraft were adapted war bombers and that the in-flight service left much to be desired. \u201cHis contact suggested he travel with the Brazilian airline Panair because they had brand new planes, good food, and attractive flight attendants,\u201d said the journalist C\u00e1ssio Leite Vieira in the book C<\/em>\u00e9<\/em>sar Lattes \u2013 <\/em>Arrastado pela Hist<\/em>\u00f3<\/em>ria<\/em> (C\u00e9sar Lattes \u2013 Carried by History), a brief biography published by CBPF in 2017 that can be downloaded for free online. The Brazilian physicist flew by Panair and probably escaped death: the British plane crashed in Dakar. \u201cThere are reports that there were no survivors,\u201d wrote Leite Vieira.<\/p>\n

After confirming the discovery of the pion in the experiment in Bolivia and then at the Berkeley accelerator in 1948, Lattes returned to Brazil with a high reputation. After his involvement in the creation of the CBPF and CNPq, he remained in Rio de Janeiro for most of the 1950s. Between 1955 and 1957, he spent time at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota in the U.S. \u201cHe didn\u2019t publish much during this period \u2014 probably due to his mental health problems, marked by episodes of depression,\u201d Leite Vieira explained in his book.<\/p>\n

In 1960, Lattes returned as professor to the place where his career began: USP. Two years later, he began a major international research project called the Brazil-Japan Collaboration (CBJ), which studied cosmic rays for four decades, primarily at a physics lab in Chacaltaya, Bolivia. \u201cLattes could have stayed abroad,\u201d says Clim\u00e9rio Paulo da Silva Neto, a science historian from the UFBA Physics Institute. Always a nationalist, however, he wanted to develop Brazilian science, and he prioritized partnerships with South Americans and countries outside Europe and the U.S.<\/p>\n

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C\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span>Lattes arriving in Brazil in 1948C\u00e9sar Lattes personal archive<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

His return to the institution that trained him was not permanent, however. In 1967, after spending a year at the University of Pisa in Italy where he worked more closely with geochronology, Lattes transferred to UNICAMP, which had been founded the previous year. He chose to leave USP because of a disagreement over a position as a full professor. He moved to Campinas and took his CBJ research with him. The new university, located in the interior of S\u00e3o Paulo, was where Lattes spent most of his time as a professor and researcher until he retired in 1986. He died in 2005 at the age of 80.<\/p>\n

Although he came from a wealthy family, Lattes was always seen as a down-to-earth and approachable person. He loved animals. In interviews, he said he would have liked to have been a veterinarian if he had not become a physicist. There are many stories about one of his dogs, Ga\u00facho, a pointer who was like his shadow at UNICAMP in the 1970s and 1980s. The dog participated in his classes, attended his lab, and accompanied him on journeys in the car. \u201cMy husband [Jos\u00e9 Augusto Chinellato, a professor at UNICAMP] defended his doctoral thesis with Ga\u00facho in the room,\u201d recalls the physicist Carola Dobrigkeit Chinellato with a smile. Chinellato, a professor at the same university, was also supervised by Lattes during her PhD, and like her husband, she went on to investigate cosmic rays.<\/p>\n

Friends and colleagues say that although Lattes was generally kind and humble, he was not always an easy person to be around. At times he could be harsh and even unfair. One historic episode was his public attempt to debunk Albert Einstein’s (1879\u20131955) theory of relativity in 1980. \u201cI remember him calling me and saying he wanted to hold a conference to criticize Einstein\u2019s work,\u201d says the physicist Roberto Leal Lobo, director of the CBPF between 1979 and 1982. \u201cI thought the phone call was strange. But there was no way to refuse the request from Lattes, who was the founder of the center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lattes presented his controversial ideas at the CBPF, and he invited the press to the event. In an article published in the newspaper Jornal do Brasil<\/em> on June 15, 1980, Lattes said, \u201cHe [Einstein] just got lucky. I think he was mentally ill. But the mentally ill sometimes see things that other people don’t see. He made two lucky guesses: his theory on the photoelectric effect and his theory on black-body radiation, the basis of quantum mechanics. But in everything else, I think he\u2019s clueless.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a presentation at the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC), the physicist Jayme Tiomno (1920\u20132011), then at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), defended Einstein’s ideas. \u201cLattes regretted this whole situation later,\u201d says the physicist Edison Shibuya, a retired professor from UNICAMP who was supervised by the pion discoverer during his PhD and then studied cosmic rays and worked alongside him for almost four decades. \u201cLattes saw that the measurements he used to test relativity could have been affected by the equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lattes was married and had four daughters, three of whom are still alive. None studied physics or became scientists. He also had a brother, Davide, who owned a construction company. At the universities he attended, in addition to his scientific work, he left hundreds of academic descendants: researchers whose master\u2019s or doctoral studies were supervised by him and who, in turn, trained new postgraduate students. There is no greater legacy for a master than the success of his or her pupils. In April 2024, the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic included Lattes in the Livro dos Her<\/em>\u00f3<\/em>is e Hero<\/em>\u00ed<\/em>nas da P<\/em>\u00e1tria<\/em> (Book of National Heroes).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"C\u00e9sar Lattes’ studies were based on experiments with cosmic rays and the use of accelerators in particle physics","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":541648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"coauthors":[101],"class_list":["post-541639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542868,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541639\/revisions\/542868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541639"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=541639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}