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DESY News: Dieter Haidt wins Enrico Fermi Prize
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News from the DESY research centre
Dieter Haidt wins Enrico Fermi Prize
The Italian Physical Society awarded DESY physicist Dieter Haidt with the Enrico Fermi Prize 2011. Haidt and Antonino Pullia from the University of Milano share the renowned research prize for their contributions to the discovery of weak neutral currents in the Gargamelle neutrino experiment at CERN.
The weak neutral currents that were discovered in 1973 in the Gargamelle bubble chamber at CERN provided important fundaments for today’s standard model of particle physics. It is considered as the CERN research centre’s first great discovery. The Gargamelle Collaboration searched for neutrino reactions without muons coming out, and found a surprisingly large number of such events. Haidt’s calculations for this experiment proved that the observed events were no interactions between the long-known neutrons but a new kind of process. These calculations were so much convincing that the discovery of these neutral currents was published in July 1973. The scientists agree that the certain evidence of this discovery would not have been possible without the work of Dieter Haidt.
Dieter Haidt studied physics at the University of Tübingen and worked at CERN from 1971 to 1979. Afterwards he was a leading scientist at DESY and did research at the Jade and H1 particle detectors until he became emeritus professor in 2007.
On 26 September, the Enrico Fermi Prize worth 30 000 euros will be presented to both scientists on the annual meeting of the Italian Physical Society in L’Aquila.
