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{{Short description|American nuclear physicist}}
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{{use mdy dates|date=May 2015}}
{{Infobox scientist
|name              = Val Logsdon Fitch
|image             = Val Fitch.jpg
|birth_date        = {{Birth date|1923|3|10|mf=yes}}
|birth_place       = [[Merriman, Nebraska]]
|death_date        = {{Death date and age|2015|2|5|1923|3|10|mf=yes}}
|death_place       = [[Princeton, New Jersey]]
|fields            = [[Particle physics]]
|workplaces        = 
* [[Manhattan Project]]
* [[Princeton University]]
|education         = [[Chadron State College]]<br>[[Northwestern University]]<br>[[Carnegie Mellon University]]<br>[[McGill University]] ([[Bachelor of Science|BS]])<br>[[Columbia University]] ([[Master of Science|MS]], [[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])
|doctoral_advisor  = [[James Rainwater]] 
|thesis_title      = Studies of X-rays from Mu-Mesonic Atoms
|thesis_year       = 1954
|known_for         = Discovery of [[CP-violation]]
|awards            = [[Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award|E. O. Lawrence Award]] (1968)<br/>[[John Price Wetherill Medal]] (1976)<br/>[[Nobel Prize in Physics]] (1980)<br/>[[National Medal of Science]] (1993)
}}
'''Val Logsdon Fitch''' (March 10, 1923 – February 5, 2015) was an American [[nuclear physics|nuclear physicist]] who, with co-researcher [[James Watson Cronin|James Cronin]], was awarded the 1980 [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] for a 1964 experiment using the [[Alternating Gradient Synchrotron]] at [[Brookhaven National Laboratory]] that proved that certain [[subatomic]] reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of [[K-meson]]s, that a reaction run in reverse does not retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the reactions of subatomic particles are not indifferent to time. Thus the phenomenon of [[CP violation]] was discovered. This demolished the faith that physicists had that natural laws were governed by symmetry.

Born on a cattle ranch near [[Merriman, Nebraska]], Fitch was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, and worked on the [[Manhattan Project]] at the [[Los Alamos Laboratory]] in [[New Mexico]]. He later graduated from [[McGill University]], and completed his [[PhD]] in [[physics]] in 1954 at [[Columbia University]].  He was a member of the faculty at [[Princeton University]] from 1954 until his retirement in 2005.

==Early life==
Val Logsdon Fitch was born on a cattle ranch near [[Merriman, Nebraska]], on March 10, 1923, the youngest of three children of Fred Fitch, a cattle rancher, and his wife Frances née Logsdon, a school teacher.<ref name="autobio">{{Cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1980/fitch-bio.html  |title=Val Fitch – Biographical |publisher=Nobel Foundation |access-date=February 13, 2015}}</ref> He had an older brother and sister.<ref name="Finn Aserud">{{cite web |url=http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/33299.html |title=Interview with Val Fitch by Finn Aserud on December 18, 1986 |publisher=Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics |access-date=May 15, 2015 |archive-date=April 2, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402110533/http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/33299.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> The family farm was about {{convert|4|sqmi}} in size.<ref name="autobio"/> The ranch was small; his father specialized in raising breeding stock.<ref name="Video">{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1118 |title=Interview with Val Fitch |publisher=Nobel Foundation |access-date=May 15, 2015}}</ref> Soon after his birth, his father was badly injured in a horse riding accident and could no longer work on his ranch, so the family moved to the nearby town of [[Gordon, Nebraska]], where his father entered the insurance business.<ref name="autobio"/> Here he attended school,<ref name="autobio"/> graduating from Gordon High School in 1940 as [[valedictorian]].<ref name="NNDB"/><ref name="Princeton"/>

==Manhattan Project==
Fitch attended [[Chadron State College]] for three years, then transferred to [[Northwestern University]]. This was during WWII; his studies were interrupted by being drafted into the US Army in 1943. After completing basic training, he was sent to [[Carnegie Institute of Technology]] for training under the [[Army Specialized Training Program]].<ref name="Finn Aserud" /> Under this program, some 200,000 soldiers attended colleges for intensive courses. Fitch was in the program for less than a year before the manpower requirements of the war became too great, and the Army terminated the program. Most of the soldiers in the ASTP were posted to combat units, but Fitch was one of a hundred or so ASTP soldiers who joined the [[Special Engineer Detachment]] (SED), which provided much-needed technicians to the [[Manhattan Project]].<ref name="Finn Aserud" /><ref name="ASTP">{{cite web |url=http://www.pierce-evans.org/ASTP%20in%20WWII.htm |title=The Army Specialized Training Program In World War II |first=Louis E. |last=Keefer |access-date=May 15, 2015 |archive-date=July 27, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080727012157/http://www.pierce-evans.org/ASTP%20in%20WWII.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="SED">{{cite journal |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nwsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA43 |access-date=May 15, 2015 |title=All in Our Time: The View from the Bottom |volume=31 |issue=2 |date=February 1975 |pages=43–46 |doi=10.1080/00963402.1975.11458205|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The Army sent Fitch to the Manhattan Project's [[Los Alamos Laboratory]] in New Mexico. By mid-1944, about a third of the technicians at Los Alamos were from the SED. There he met many of the greats of physics including [[Niels Bohr]], [[James Chadwick]], [[Enrico Fermi]], [[Isidor Isaac Rabi]], [[Bruno Rossi]], [[Emilio Segrè]], [[Edward Teller]] and [[Richard C. Tolman]], in some cases attending physics courses taught by them. He worked in the group headed by [[Ernest Titterton]], a member of the [[British contribution to the Manhattan Project|British Mission]], and became well-acquainted with the techniques of [[experimental physics]]. He participated in the drop testing of mock [[atomic bomb]]s that was conducted at [[Wendover Army Air Field]] and the [[Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea]], and worked at the Trinity site, where he witnessed the [[Trinity nuclear test]] on July 16, 1945. He was discharged from the Army in 1946. He continued to work at Los Alamos as a civilian for another year to earn money. He briefly returned to Los Alamos in summer 1948.<ref name="autobio"/><ref name="Finn Aserud" /><ref name="SED"/>

==Academic career==
His wartime experiences led Fitch to decide to become a physicist. [[Robert Bacher]], the head of the physics division at Los Alamos, offered him a graduate assistantship at [[Cornell University]], but first he needed to complete his undergraduate degree. Rather than return to Northwestern or Carnegie Mellon, he elected to enter [[McGill University]], which Titterton had recommended. Fitch graduated from McGill with a bachelor's degree in [[electrical engineering]] in 1948. On the advice of Jerry Kellogg, who had been a student of Rabi's at [[Columbia University]], and was a division head at the Los Alamos, Fitch decided to pursue his doctoral studies at Columbia. Kellogg wrote him a letter of introduction to Rabi. [[James Rainwater]] became his academic supervisor. Rainwater gave him a paper by [[John Archibald Wheeler|John Wheeler]] concerning [[mu-mesic atom]]s, atoms in which an [[electron]] is replaced by a [[muon]]. These had never been observed; they were completely theoretical and there was no evidence that they existed, but it made a good thesis topic.<ref name="autobio"/><ref name="Finn Aserud" />

Fitch designed and built an experiment to measure the [[gamma rays]] emitted from mu-mesic atoms. As it turned out, this was a good time to search for them. Columbia had recently commissioned a [[cyclotron]] at the [[Nevis Laboratories]] that could produce muons; [[Robert Hofstadter]] had developed the thallium-activated sodium iodide gamma ray detector; and wartime advances in electronics yielded advances in components such as new [[phototube]]s needed to bring it all together. Initially nothing was found, but Rainwater suggested expanding the search beyond the energy range predicted by Wheeler on the basis of the then-accepted size of the radius of the [[atomic nucleus]] as around 1.4 × 10<sup>−15</sup> m. When this was done, they found what they had been looking for, discovering in the process that the nucleus was closer to 1.2 × 10<sup>−15</sup> m.<ref name="autobio"/><ref name="Finn Aserud" /> He completed his [[PhD]] in 1954, writing his thesis on "Studies of X-rays from mu-mesonic atoms".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/1563450 |title=Studies of X-rays from Mu-Mesonic atoms |year=1954 |publisher=[[Columbia University]] |oclc=35087719 |access-date=May 15, 2015}}</ref> The thesis was published in the ''[[Physical Review]]'' in November 1953.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=[[Physical Review]] |title=Studies of X-Rays from Mu-Mesonic Atoms |last1=Fitch |first1=Val L. |last2=Rainwater |first2=James |volume=92 |issue=3 |pages=789–800 |date=November 1953 |publisher=American Physical Society |doi=10.1103/PhysRev.92.789 |bibcode=1953PhRv...92..789F}}</ref>

In 1949, Fitch married Elise Cunningham, a secretary who worked in the laboratory at Columbia. They had two sons. Elise died in 1972, and in 1976 he married Daisy Harper Sharp, thereby acquiring two stepdaughters and a stepson.<ref name="NNDB">{{cite web |url=http://www.nndb.com/people/838/000099541/ |title=Val Fitch |publisher=Soylent Communications |access-date=May 15, 2015}}</ref><ref name="New York Times"/> After obtaining his doctorate, Fitch's interest shifted to [[strange particle]]s and [[K meson]]s. In 1954, he joined the physics faculty at [[Princeton University]], where he spent the rest of his career. He was the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics from 1969 to 1976, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics from 1976 to 1982, and the [[James Smith McDonnell|James S. McDonnell]] Distinguished University Professor of Physics from 1982 to 1993, when he retired and took up the position of visiting lecturer with the rank of professor for three years before entering emeritus status.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Val Logsdon Fitch {{!}} Department of Physics |url=https://phy.princeton.edu/department/history/faculty-history/val-fitch |access-date=2020-06-12 |website=phy.princeton.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Nobel laureate and Princeton physicist Val Fitch dies at age 91 |url=https://www.princeton.edu/news/2015/02/06/nobel-laureate-and-princeton-physicist-val-fitch-dies-age-91 |access-date=2020-06-12 |website=Princeton University |language=en}}</ref> He was chair of the physics department from 1976 to 1981.<ref name="Princeton" />

Fitch conducted much of his research at the [[Brookhaven National Laboratory]], where he became acquainted with [[James Watson Cronin|James Cronin]]. The two of them played bridge at nights while they waited for the [[Cosmotron]] to become available. Cronin had built a new kind of detector, a [[spark chamber]] spectrometer, and Fitch realized that it would be perfect for experiments with [[K meson]]s (now known as kaons), which [[Yale University]] physicist [[Robert Adair (physicist)|Robert Adair]] had suggested had interesting properties worth investigating. They could decay into either matter or [[antimatter]]. Along with two colleagues, James Christenson and [[René Turlay]], they set up their experiment on the [[Alternating Gradient Synchrotron]] at Brookhaven. They discovered an unexpected result. The decay of neutral K mesons did not respect [[CP symmetry]]. K mesons that decayed into [[positron]]s did so faster than those that decayed into [[electron]]s.<ref name="New York Times"/><ref>{{cite journal |title=Evidence for the 2π Decay of the K<sub>2</sub><sup>0</sup> Meson |last1=Christenson |first1=J. H. |last2=Cronin |first2=J. W. |last3=Fitch |first3=V. L. |last4=Turlay |first4=R. |journal=Physical Review Letters |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=138–140 |date=July 1964  |publisher=American Physical Society |doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.138 |bibcode=1964PhRvL..13..138C |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1980/cronin-lecture.pdf |title=CP Symmetry Violation – The Search for Its Origin (Nobel lecture) |date=December 8, 1980 |first=James W. |last=Cronin |author-link=James Watson Cronin |access-date=May 15, 2015}}</ref> The importance of this result was not immediately appreciated; but as evidence of the [[Big Bang]] accumulated, [[Andrei Sakharov]] realized in 1967 that it explained why the universe is largely made of matter and not antimatter.<ref name="New York Times"/> Put simply, they had found "the answer to the physicist's 'Why do we exist?'"<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~elliott/CP_violation.pdf |access-date=May 15, 2015  |title=Matter, Antimatter, and Why are We Here: CP violation may be the reason |journal=FermiNews |date=April 17, 1998}}</ref> For this discovery, Fitch and Cronin received the 1980 [[Nobel Prize in Physics]].<ref name="autobio"/>

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Fitch received the [[Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award]] in 1968, the [[John Price Wetherill Medal]] in 1976 and the [[National Medal of Science]] in 1993.<ref name="NNDB"/> He was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the ''[[Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]]'' and the [[JASON (advisory group)|JASON defense advisory group]].<ref name="Rent-a-Genius">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/books/review/16horgan.html |title=Rent-a-Genius |last=Horgan |first=John |work=The New York Times |date=April 16, 2006}}</ref> He was elected a Fellow of the [[American Physical Society]] in 1964<ref>{{cite web |title=APS Fellow Archive |url=https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=&year=1964&unit_id=&institution=Princeton+University}}</ref> and a Member of both the [[National Academy of Sciences]] and the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1966.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-members/55728.html |title=Val L. Fitch, Princeton University. March 10, 1923 - February 5, 2015 |website=www.nasonline.org |publisher=National Academy of Sciences |access-date=April 3, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Val Logsdon Fitch |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/val-logsdon-fitch |access-date=2021-12-21 |website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |language=en}}</ref> In 1981, Fitch became a founding member of the [[World Cultural Council]]<ref>{{cite web |title=About Us |publisher=[[World Cultural Council]] |url=http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/about-us/ |access-date=November 8, 2016}}</ref> and received the Golden Plate Award of the [[Academy of Achievement|American Academy of Achievement]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |website=www.achievement.org |publisher=[[American Academy of Achievement]] |url=https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration}}</ref> He was president of the [[American Physical Society]] from 1988 to 1989, and he served on a number of governmental science and science policy committees, including the [[President's Science Advisory Committee]] from 1970 to 1973.<ref name="Princeton" /> 

Fitch is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President [[George W. Bush]] in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the [[United States Department of Energy|Department of Energy]]’s [[Office of Science]], the [[National Science Foundation]], and the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Letter from America's Physics Nobel Laureates |url=https://fire.pppl.gov/nobel_bush_fy08_050808.pdf}}</ref>

He died at his home in [[Princeton, New Jersey]], at the age of 91 on February 5, 2015.<ref name="Princeton">{{Cite web |url=http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S42/32/62C77 |title=Nobel laureate and Princeton physicist Val Fitch dies at age 91 |first=Catherine |last=Zandonella |date=February 6, 2015 |publisher=[[Princeton University]]}}</ref><ref name="New York Times">{{cite news |author=Dennis Overbye |title=Val Fitch, Who Discovered Universe to Be Out of Balance, Is Dead at 91 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/us/val-fitch-who-discovered-universe-to-be-out-of-balance-is-dead-at-91.html |quote=Val Fitch, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for work that revealed a surprising imbalance in the laws of nature and helped explain why the collision of matter and antimatter has not destroyed everything in the universe, died on Thursday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 91. ... |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=February 10, 2015 |access-date=February 11, 2015 |author-link=Dennis Overbye}}</ref>

==Publications==
* Fitch, V. [https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4428986-some-notes-wideband-feedback-amplifiers "Some Notes on Wideband Feedback Amplifiers"], [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]], [[United States Department of Energy]] (through predecessor agency the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission|Atomic Energy Commission]]), (March 16, 1949).
* Fitch, V. [https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4434846-high-resolution-scale-four "A High Resolution Scale-of-four"], [[Columbia University]], [[United States Department of Energy]] (through predecessor agency the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission|Atomic Energy Commission]]), (August 25, 1949).

==References==
{{reflist|30em}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/33299 Oral history interview transcript with Val Fitch on 18 December 1986, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]
*{{cite web |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1118 |title=Interview with Val Fitch |date=March 17, 2009 |publisher=Nobel Foundation |access-date=May 15, 2015}} Video interview.
*{{Nobelprize}} including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1980 ''The Discovery of Charge – Conjugation Parity Asymmetry''
*{{cite web |url=http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/val-fitchs-interview |title=Val Fitch's Interview |date=March 26, 2008 |publisher=Atomic Heritage Foundation |series=Voices of the Manhattan Project |access-date=May 15, 2015}} Video interview.
{{Nobel Prize in Physics Laureates 1976-2000}}
{{1980 Nobel Prize winners}}
{{Presidents of the American Physical Society}}
{{Winners of the National Medal of Science}}
{{Manhattan Project}}
{{Founding members of the World Cultural Council}}
{{Authority control}}
{{Portal bar|Biography|History of science|Nuclear technology|Physics}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, Val Logsdon}}
[[Category:1923 births]]
[[Category:2015 deaths]]
[[Category:American Nobel laureates]]
[[Category:American nuclear physicists]]
[[Category:Chadron State College alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia University alumni]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society]]
[[Category:Founding members of the World Cultural Council]]
[[Category:Manhattan Project people]]
[[Category:People from Los Alamos, New Mexico]]
[[Category:McGill University Faculty of Engineering alumni]]
[[Category:Northwestern University alumni]]
[[Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:National Medal of Science laureates]]
[[Category:Nobel laureates in Physics]]
[[Category:American particle physicists]]
[[Category:People from Cherry County, Nebraska]]
[[Category:Princeton University faculty]]
[[Category:Brookhaven National Laboratory Nobel laureates]]
[[Category:Brookhaven National Laboratory staff]]
[[Category:United States Army soldiers]]
[[Category:United States Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:Members of JASON (advisory group)]]
[[Category:People from Gordon, Nebraska]]
[[Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Physical Society]]