Pioneering physicist finally receives her doctorate at the age of 98
Written by Angie Sharma on July 25, 2024
A physicist who dropped out of post-graduate school to raise her family 75 years ago was awarded an honorary PhD at the age of 98.
Rosemary Fowler was studying at the University of Bristol in 1948 when she discovered the kaon particle, but she left academia before earning her doctorate when she married fellow physicist Peter Fowler in 1949.
Sir Paul Nurse, the chancellor of the University of Bristol, said Fowler “paved the way for critical discoveries that continue to shape the work of today’s physicists, and our understanding of the universe.”
Fowler was 22 when she discovered a particle that decayed into three pions. This particle was later dubbed the kaon.
“I knew at once that it was new and would be very important. We were seeing things that hadn’t been seen before — that’s what research in particle physics was. It was very exciting,” she said.
Fowler was made an honorary Doctor of Science in a private graduation ceremony near her Cambridge home.
“I’m really pleased for my mother,” daughter Mary Fowler said. “As a child I wanted to be a physicist because it seemed to be so exciting. With both parents being physicists, physics and research was a normal topic of conversation across the kitchen table. ”
