Anderson, Carl David

Anderson, Carl David (ăn`dərsən), 1905–91, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. California Institute of Technology (B.S., 1927; Ph.D., 1930). Associated with the institute's physics department from 1930, he became professor in 1939. For his discovery (1932) of the positron, he shared with V. F. Hess the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics. The muon particle was discovered in cosmic rays in 1935 by Anderson and his associate S. H. Neddermeyer and almost simultaneously by J. C. Street and E. C. Stevenson at Harvard.