Richard Dalitz

Richard Dalitz (28 February 1925 – 13 January 2006) was an Australian physicist known for his work in particle physics.

Quotes

• One can see clearly some ambivalence in Dirac's attitudes... On the one hand, he has repeated many, many times his conviction that beauty in the fundamental equations of physics has priority... On the other hand... we see Dirac deeply involved with approximate calculations whose only purpose was to obtain an answer which the experimenters could rely upon.
  • R. H. Dalitz, Another side to Paul Dirac, in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (Cambridge University, Cambridge, 1987) Chapter 10.

• In reality, experimenters are cussed individuals, eager to prove the theoreticians wrong whenever possible.
  • R. H. Dalitz, Fundamental Developments, Nature 314 387–388 (1985).

• The two photons are entangled and according to local realism, their polarization planes should become independent... a typical EPR situation. Already in 1948, observations... agreed with quantum mechanics, not with local realism.
  • R. H. Dalitz and F. J. Duarte, John Clive Ward, Physics Today 53, 99-100 (2000).

Quotes about Dalitz

• Dalitz plots led to the discovery of some 100 ephemeral particles, many living no longer than the time taken by a light beam to cross an atomic nucleus.
  • Frank Close, Richard Dalitz, The Guardian (23 January 2006).

• It is most likely that the Higgs boson, supersymmetric particles, or whatever other surprises await us, will be revealed by means of Dalitz plots.
  • Frank Close, Richard Dalitz, The Guardian (23 January 2006).

• I was enlightened by some long conversations with Dick Dalitz, a particle physicist, who himself was a giant of Australian physics known for the Dalitz plot and the Dalitz pair.
  • F. J. Duarte, The man behind an identity in quantum electrodynamics, Australian Physics 46 (6), 171-175 (2009).