Arthur Roberts 1912-2004

Arthur Roberts, who was well known not only as a particle physicist, but also as a musician and composer, passed away on 22 April 2004 at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii.

A native New Yorker, Art studied both music and physics at university. A Bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York (part of the City University New York system) was followed in 1933 a degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music and by a PhD in physics from New York University in 1936. He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and although he continued with music through teaching at the England Conservatory of Music, his career became more weighted towards physics, with joint positions with the cyclotron group at MIT and the Harvard Medical School. Here he was the physicist on the team that pioneered the use of radioactive isotopes in medicine by treating hyperactive thyroids with radioiodine.

Art moved to the MIT Radiation Laboratory in 1941, where he led the development of microwave beacons used by British and US “Pathfinders” during the Second World War in 1944-5. After the war, he moved to the University of Iowa, and in 1950 to the University of Rochester. At Iowa he had worked on the measurement of the magnetic moment of the neutron and deuteron, and at Rochester his research became more oriented to particle physics with an investigation of the pion-nucleon interaction at the sychrocyclotron. Here he also helped to found the famous series of “Rochester Conferences”.

Another move followed in 1960, this time to the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory. It was here that Art invented the ring imaging Cherenkov counter (RICH), now widely used for particle identification in many high energy physics experiments. He also brought a research group to CERN, in 1961-2. He later became involved in the planning for what became the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, where he moved in 1970, and became involved in research in hyperon physics.

During the 1970s Art began to become interested in the possibility of building an underwater neutrino “observatory”, in particular in the deep waters off Hawaii. He moved to the University of Hawaii in Honolulu in 1980 together with John Learned and neutrino pioneer Fred Reines, where they made the first studies for an underwater neutrino detector with the DUMAND project. This was his last physics project, and its history was the subject of his last paper, published in 1992.

Art is perhaps as well known among the physics community for his musical talent, which lightened many a conference, with songs he had composed about physics and the academic life, including probably most famously “Take away your billion dollars”. In a more serious vein, he wrote “Overture for the Dedication of a Nuclear Reactor”, which was premiered by the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra in 1955.

We will miss the “bard of physics”.

John Learned, Honolulu.