Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart

Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart (blăk`ĭt), 1897–1974, English physicist. He was professor of physics at the Univ. of Manchester (1937–53) and in 1953 became professor at the Univ. of London. For his work in improving and extending the use of the Wilson cloud chamber and for his discoveries concerning cosmic rays he received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is the author of Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (1948, rev. ed. 1949; American ed. Fear, War and the Bomb, 1949) and Atomic Weapons and East-West Relations (1956). In 1965 he was elected president of the Royal Society, London.