Hats Off to Another Renowned Canadian Scientist

The winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physics,
Professor B.N. Brockhouse of McMaster University

Being the recipient of a Nobel Prize is one of the greatest global honours a person can achieve. This experience was made possible by a man named Alfred Nobel who left most of his fortune to establish five awards in the fields of literature, chemistry, physics, medicine, and peace. Four of the five awards were to be selected by the Swedish, with the exception of the winner of the peace prize who was to be selected by five people elected by the Norwegian Parliament. In December of 1901, the first Nobel Prize was awarded. In 1968, the Bank of Sweden established a sixth prize to be awarded in the Economic Sciences.

Canadian scientists have been awarded fifteen Nobel Prizes of which there were eight in chemistry, three in physics, and four in medicine. The eight Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have been won by such eminent Canadian scientists as Dr. Ernest Rutherford (1908), Dr. James Sumner (1946), Dr. Gerhard Herzberg (1971), Dr. Henry Taube (1983), Dr. John C. Polanyi (1986), Dr. Sidney Altman (1989), Dr. Rudolf Marcus (1992) and Dr. Michael Smith (1993).

The most recent Canadian Nobel Prize winner is Professor Bertram Neville Brockhouse, a physicist from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. In 1994 he was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for his contribution to the development of neutron inelastic scattering techniques to study condensed matter (solids and liquids).

To conduct this study, Dr. Brockhouse designed and developed both a time of flight spectrometer and the first triple axis spectrometer at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. You might be wondering, what are they used for? In simple terms, they are used to determine 'what atoms do' when bombarded with neutrons given off by a nuclear reactor. The patterns that emerge from the velocities of the rebounding neutrons give details of how the atoms are arranged, the strength of the forces between atoms (ionic, covalent and metallic bonds) in solids and the motion of individual atoms in liquids.

Although Dr. Brockhouse's award was in the field of Physics, Neutron Spectroscopy has had a major impact in the field of Chemistry. Spectroscopic studies have provided detail on lattice (framework of solids) vibrations, magnetic materials, and diffusion processes.