Download Igor Goloutvin, one of the leading JINR scientists

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.