Carl Anderson
Carl D. Anderson (1905–1991)
Carl David Anderson was born in New York City on 3 September 1905. He studied physics and engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and then began investigations into cosmic rays.
Discovering antimatter!
It was during these investigations that he recognised unusual particle tracks in his cloud chamber, and correctly interpreted them as the tracks of a previously unknown particle, which had the same mass as an electron, but the opposite electrical charge: a positron.
Another claim to fame
Just a few years later, in 1936, Anderson and his first graduate student, Seth Neddermeyer, discovered the muon (also sometimes called the ‘mu-meson’). This is another subatomic particle, 207 times more massive than the electron or positron.
