98-year-old woman awarded doctorate in the UK
A 98-year-old scientist who abandoned her doctoral studies 75 years ago to start a family has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bristol, Kazinform News Agency correspondent reports.
In 1948, Rosemary Fowler paved the way for major breakthroughs that rewrote the laws of physics. Her discovery of the Kaon particle helped revolutionise particle physics theory and paved the way for the prediction of particles such as the Higgs boson, discovered at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
However, in post-war Britain, she chose to leave academia in 1949 after marrying fellow physicist Peter Fowler and having three children.
Dr. Fowler said that receiving the degree was a great honour, but humbly noted that she had not done anything since to warrant such recognition.
The Chancellor of the University of Bristol, Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse, awarded her the honorary Doctor of Science degree at a private ceremony near her home in Cambridge. Nurse praised Dr. Fowler's intellectual rigour and curiosity, stating that she "paved the way for critical discoveries that continue to shape the work of modern physicists and our understanding of the universe."
Born in Suffolk, England, in 1926, Rosemary Fowler grew up in Malta, Portsmouth, and Bath as her family moved with her father's career as a Royal Navy engineer.
In 1948, a Bristol research group led by Professor Cecil Powell was investigating cosmic rays in search of new elementary particles. They had already discovered the pion, an unstable particle responsible for the strong nuclear force that binds nucleons in the atomic nucleus, for which Professor Powell would receive the Nobel Prize in 1950.
At just 22, Rosemary Fowler (nee Brown) observed something unusual while examining particle traces— a particle that decayed into three pions.
A year after her discovery, Dr. Fowler left the university, publishing her findings in three scientific papers.
