Science: The Prize

In 1955, using the University of California's big new atom smasher at Berkeley, Physicists Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain identified an elusive subatomic particle that had long been postulated but never found: the antiproton. Their discovery, honored four years later by a Nobel Prize, helped confirm the existence of "antimatter"—the strange substance that has many physical properties exactly opposite to those of "normal" matter. Now, to the astonishment of the scientific world, a fellow physicist has filed suit against Segrè and Chamberlain, accusing them of stealing a key idea that led to their...

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