| 1 | Name: | Dr. James Watson Cronin | |
| Institution: | University of Chicago | ||
| Year Elected: | 1999 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 106. Physics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1931 | ||
| Death Date: | August 25, 2016 | ||
James Watson Cronin received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was an assistant physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory for three years before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 1955. In 1971 he became a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Chicago, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1980, James Cronin and Val Fitch were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering a violation of the laws of symmetry in connection with the K-mesons produced at the Brookhaven proton accelerator. Dr. Cronin led the most ambitious international project for detecting the highest energy cosmic rays. The Pierre Auger Project called for the construction of a pair of 3,000 sq. km. arrays, one in Utah, the other on the high desert of Argentina. Comprised of 3,200 large Cerenkov detectors, the array will be capable of sensing cosmic rays in an entirely new and exciting energy regime. Dr. Cronin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999. | |||