William Alfred Fowler (9 August 1911 – 14 March 1995) was an American nuclear physicist, later astrophysicist, who, with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, won 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.

William Alfred Fowler
Born	(1911-08-09)August 9, 1911 Pittsburgh
Died	March 14, 1995(1995-03-14) (aged 83) Pasadena, California
Other names	Willy Fowler
Alma mater	Caltech (PhD)
Awards	Medal for Merit (1948) Barnard Medal for Meritorious Service to Science (1965) Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics (1970) Vetlesen Prize (1973) National Medal of Science (1974) Eddington Medal (1978) Nobel Prize in Physics (1983)
Scientific career
Doctoral advisor	Charles Christian Lauritsen
Doctoral students	James M. Bardeen, J. Richard Bond, Donald Clayton, George M. Fuller, F. Curtis Michel

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]

Education

In 1933, Fowler graduated from the Ohio State University, where he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. In 1936, Fowler received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.[4][5]

Career

In 1936, Fowler became a research fellow at Caltech. In 1939, Fowler became an assistant professor at Caltech.[4]

Although an experimental nuclear physicist, Fowler's most famous paper was "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars", coauthored with Cambridge cosmologist Fred Hoyle and in collaboration with two young Cambridge astronomers, Margaret Burbidge and Geoffrey Burbidge. That 1957 paper in Reviews of Modern Physics[6] categorized most nuclear processes for origin of all but the lightest chemical elements in stars. It is widely known as the B²FH paper.

In 1942, Fowler became an associate professor at Caltech. In 1946, Fowler became a Professor at Caltech.[4] Fowler, along with Lee A. DuBridge, Max Mason, Linus Pauling, and Bruce H. Sage, was awarded the Medal for Merit in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman.[7]

Fowler succeeded Charles Lauritsen as director of the W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory at Caltech, and was himself later succeeded by Steven E. Koonin. Fowler was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford.[8]

Fowler won the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society in 1963, the Vetlesen Prize in 1973, the Eddington Medal in 1978, the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1979, and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 (shared with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe .[9][10]

Fowler's doctoral students at Caltech included Donald D. Clayton.[11]

Personal life

A lifelong fan of steam locomotives, Fowler owned several working models of various sizes.[12]

Fowler's first wife was Adriane Fay (née Olmsted) Fowler (1912–1988). They had two daughters, Mary Emily and Martha.[2][13]

In December 1989, Fowler married Mary Dutcher (1919–2019), an artist, in Pasadena, California.[2][13] On 11 March 1995, Fowler died from kidney failure in Pasadena, California. He was 83.[2][14]

Publications

• Fowler, W.A.; Lauritsen, C.C (1949-05-26). "Gamma radiation from light nuclei under proton bombardment" (PDF). Physical Review. 73 (2): 314–315. Bibcode:1948PhRv...73..181F. doi:10.1103/physrev.73.181.2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-08-08.
• Cook, C.W.; Fowler, W.A.; Lauritsen, C.C.; Lauritsen, T. (1957-07-15). "B¹², C¹² and the Red Hot Giants". Physical Review. 107 (2): 508. Bibcode:1957PhRv..107..508C. doi:10.1103/physrev.107.508.
• Clayton, D.D; Fowler, W.A; Hull, T.E; Zimmerman, B.A. (1961-03-01). "Neutron capture chains in heavy element synthesis". Annals of Physics. 12 (3): 331–408. Bibcode:1961AnPhy..12..331C. doi:10.1016/0003-4916(61)90067-7. ISSN 0003-4916.
• Burbidge, E. M.; Burbidge, G. R.; Fowler, W. A.; Hoyle, F. (1957). "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars". Reviews of Modern Physics. 29 (4): 547–650. Bibcode:1957RvMP...29..547B. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.29.547. ISSN 0034-6861. LCCN 31021290. OCLC 5975699.
• Fowler, W. A. (June 1958). Temperature and Density Conditions for Nucleogenesis by Fusion Processes in Stars. W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory. doi:10.2172/4308210. OSTI 4308210.
• Seeger, P. A.; Fowler, W. A.; Clayton, Donald D. (1965). "Nucleosynthesis of heavy elements by neutron capture". Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 11: 121–166. Bibcode:1965ApJS...11..121S. doi:10.1086/190111. Archived from the original on 2021-04-28. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
• Bodansky, D.; Clayton, Donald D.; Fowler, W.A. (1968-01-22). "Nucleosynthesis during silicon burning". Physical Review Letters. 20 (4): 161–164. Bibcode:1968PhRvL..20..161B. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.20.161. Archived from the original on 2021-07-23. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
• Holmes, J.A.; Woosley, S.E.; Fowler, W.A.; Zimmerman, B.A. (1976). "Tables of thermonuclear-reaction-rate for neutron-induced reactions on heavy nuclei". Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables. 18: 305. Bibcode:1976ADNDT..18..305H. doi:10.1016/0092-640x(76)90011-5.
• Caughlan, G.R.; Fowler, W.A.; Zimmerman, B.A. (September 1975). "Thermonuclear reaction rates, II". Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 13: 69–112. Bibcode:1975ARA&A..13...69F. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.13.090175.000441. Archived from the original on 2022-01-30. Retrieved 2022-03-21.

Obituaries

• Woosley, Stanford E. (1995). "Obituary: William A. Fowler, 1911–1995". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 27 (4): 1475. Bibcode:1995BAAS...27.1475W. Archived from the original on 2022-03-21. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
• Clayton, Donald D. (1996). "William Alfred Fowler (1911-1995)". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 108 (719): 1–7. Bibcode:1996PASP..108....1C. doi:10.1086/133686. JSTOR 40680678.
• Burbidge, G. (1996). "William Alfred Fowler, 1911 - 14 March 1995". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 37 (1): 89. Bibcode:1996QJRAS..37...89B.

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to William Alfred Fowler.

• Oral history interview transcript with William Fowler on 8 June 1972, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session I
• Oral history interview transcript with William Fowler on 9 June 1972, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session II
• Oral history interview transcript with William Fowler on 5 February 1973, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session III
• Oral history interview transcript with William Fowler on 6 February 1973, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session IV
• Oral history interview transcript with William Fowler on 30 May 1974, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session V
• 1983 Audio Interview with William Fowler by Martin Sherwin Voices of the Manhattan Project
• W.A. Fowler: Radioactive elements of a low atomic number, Ph.D. dissertation
• 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
• Guide to the Papers of William A. Fowler, 1917-1994
• Caughlan and Fowler 1988: THERMONUCLEAR REACTION RATES, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Interview with William A. Fowler, Caltech Archives Oral Histories Online

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