XLV National Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy

Session

SISFA Prize

9 Sept 2025, 15:20

Aula Magna (DIFI-Università di Genova)

Conveners

SISFA Prize

• Chairperson: Valeria Zanini

29. Bruno Rossi’s 1933 Scientific Expedition to Eritrea: An Epistolary Diary

Campagnoni, Luca (Physics and Astronomy Department "Galileo Galilei", University of Padova)

In 1933, the physicist Bruno Benedetto Rossi (1905–1993) undertook an expedition to Eritrea, which allowed him to prove that primary cosmic rays are composed mainly of positively charged particles. A few months earlier, Arthur H. Compton (1892–1962) had asked Rossi to bring to Africa also one of the ionization chambers involved in a worldwide series of experiments aimed at detecting a latitude...