February 10, 1959 - Death of Arturo Duperier, scientist noted for his study of cosmic radiation

November 12, 1896, Pedro Bernardo (Ávila, Spain) - 1959, Madrid (Spain)

The Spanish physicist Arturo Duperier Vallesa graduated in Physical Sciences at the University of Madrid, earning his doctorate in 1924 in Physical-chemical Sciences. Previously, he had joined the Meteorology Auxiliary Corps, later working in the Meteorological Observatory and in the laboratory of Blas Cabrera, of whom he was the favorite disciple.

In 1930 he went to Paris to further his knowledge of electricity at the Institut de Physique du Globe. In 1933, he obtained the chair of geophysics at the University of Madrid, carrying out during this period numerous studies on meteorology and magnetism. However, his studies on cosmic radiation were more famous, which is why he set up an ionization chamber in Madrid for the observation of cosmic radiation.

After the Civil War, Duperier went into exile in London, collaborating with Patrick Blackett at the University of Manchester. There he developed a new, much more precise technique that allowed diurnal variations in the intensity of cosmic radiation to be related to solar activity. He was a professor at the University of London and head of the Cabinet and Cosmic Ray Observatory at the Imperial Kensington Institute, returning to his chair of geophysics in Madrid in 1953.

In 1955 he presented at the International Congress of Cosmic Rays an explanatory hypothesis of the positive effect and in 1958 he presented at the International Congress in Edinburgh a New method for calculating the interaction phenomena between particles endowed with very high energies and their trajectories.

He is an elected academic of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences. In 1958 his name was cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was posthumously awarded the Juan March Science Prize corresponding to 1959.

Duperier was a noted experimenter who devised procedures for locating and studying cosmic rays, a discipline that would later become elementary particle physics.