William Alfred Fowler (August 9, 1911 – March 14, 1995) was an American nuclear physicist, later
astrophysicist, who, with
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, was awarded the 1983
Nobel Prize in Physics. He is known for his theoretical and experimental research into nuclear reactions within stars and the energy elements produced in the process[1] and was one of the authors of the influential
B2FH paper.
Early life
On 9 August 1911, Fowler was born in
Pittsburgh. Fowler's parents were John MacLeod Fowler and Jennie Summers Watson. Fowler was the eldest of his siblings, Arthur and Nelda.[1][2]
The family moved to
Lima, Ohio, a steam railroad town, when Fowler was two years old. Growing up near the
Pennsylvania Railroad yard influenced Fowler's interest in locomotives. In 1973, he travelled to the
Soviet Union just to observe the steam engine that powered the
Trans-Siberian Railway plying the nearly 2,500-kilometre (1,600 mi) route that connects
Khabarovsk and
Moscow.[3]
In 1936, Fowler became a research fellow at Caltech. He was elected to the United States
National Academy of Sciences in 1938.[6] In 1939, Fowler became an assistant professor at Caltech.[4]
Although an experimental nuclear physicist, Fowler's most famous paper was his collaboration with Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, "
Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" Significantly,
Margaret Burbidge was first author,
Geoffrey Burbidge second, Fowler third, and Cambridge cosmologist
Fred Hoyle. That 1957 paper in Reviews of Modern Physics[7] categorized most nuclear processes for origin of all but the lightest
chemical elements in stars. It is widely known as the
B2FH paper. Though the theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis established in the paper was later cited by the Nobel Committee as the reason for his 1983 Nobel in Physics, Margaret Burbidge did not share in the award.
A lifelong fan of
steam locomotives, Fowler owned several working models of various sizes.[15]
Fowler's first wife was Adriane Fay (née Olmsted) Fowler (1912–1988). They had two daughters, Mary Emily and Martha.[2][16]
In December 1989, Fowler married Mary Dutcher (1919–2019), an artist, in Pasadena, California.[2][16]
On 11 March 1995, Fowler died from kidney failure in
Pasadena, California. He was 83.[2][17]
Burbidge, G. (1996). "William Alfred Fowler, 1911 - 14 March 1995". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 37 (1): 89.
Bibcode:
1996QJRAS..37...89B.
William Alfred Fowler on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1983 Experimental and Theoretical Nuclear Astrophysics; the Quest for the Origin of the Elements