Science · Government & military
Ernest Ambler
Cryogenic physicist and parity-test experimentalist
Photograph · Image credit
Who they are
Ernest Ambler worked in the National Bureau of Standards’ Cryogenic Physics Section and later led the bureau. He was one of the experimental coauthors of the 1957 parity test with Chien-Shiung Wu and other NBS scientists. Their work measured the directional pattern of beta decay from polarized cobalt-60.
He connects precision low-temperature experimentation with a change in accepted physical symmetry.
Selected contributions
Selected works
Academic paper · 1957 · Historical journal article
Experimental Test of Parity Conservation in Beta Decay
Wu, Ambler, Hayward, Hoppes and Hudson report an asymmetry in electrons emitted by polarized cobalt-60 nuclei. The experiment tests parity conservation in a specified weak decay rather than establishing a claim about all physical processes.
Reading scope & citation
Reused prior inspected evidence: Supporting original-paper passages read from publisher PDF; raw counts and statistical analysis not independently reproduced. Publication date checked on article page. Reuses documented prior inspection: Supporting original-paper passages read from publisher PDF; raw counts and statistical analysis not independently reproduced. Publication date checked on article page.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRev.105.1413
In the timeline
Documented connections
Documented · co authored with
Chien-Shiung Wu and Ernest Ambler co-authored the parity-test report with Raymond Hayward, Dale Hoppes and Ralph Hudson.
This selected pair does not exhaust the five-author collaboration; Lee and Yang’s preceding theoretical proposal is distinct from authorship of this report.
Read the relationship record →Biography sources & portrait credit
- Experimental Test of Parity Conservation in Beta Decay ↗Physical Review 105, 1413–1415, American Physical Society
- The Fall of Parity Photo Gallery with Short Biographies ↗National Institute of Standards and Technology
Portrait credit
U.S. Government. Public domain (U.S. federal government work). Via Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph. Cropped to 4:5, resized to 320 × 400 and converted to WebP.
Image source & identification ↗ · Public domain (U.S. federal government work) ↗
