Val Logsdon Fitch
Fitch, Val Logsdon (1923-), an American nuclear physicist, shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in physics with fellow American James Watson Cronin for their research on subatomic particles, or units of matter smaller than an atom. They discovered that the fundamental laws of symmetry in nature could be violated. They were awarded the prize for an experiment in 1964 that suggested that reversing the direction of time would not produce an exact reversal of certain reactions involving subatomic particles. Before this, physicists assumed that the direction of time would not affect the way in which reactions worked.
Fitch was born in Merriman, Nebraska. While he was in the U.S. Army in the mid-1940's, he worked on the Manhattan Project, the secret program to produce the first atomic bomb. He took part in the initial bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945.
In 1948, Fitch graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with a degree in electrical engineering. In 1954, he earned a doctorate in physics at Columbia University in New York City. Following his studies, he joined the faculty of Princeton University in New Jersey, where he was appointed professor of physics in 1960. In 1976, he became a Cyrus Fogg Brackett professor of physics. In 1984, he became a James S. McDonnell Distinguished University professor of physics.
Fitch served on the President's Scientific Advisory Committee under President Richard M.Nixon from 1970 to 1973. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1949, Fitch married Elise Cunningham. The couple had two sons. Fitch was widowed in 1972, and in 1976, he married Daisy Harper Sharp.