Rosemary Fowler

Doctor of Science

Sunday 14 July 2024 - Orator: Professor Sir Paul Nurse

"Good afternoon, esteemed guests. I am Professor Sir Paul Nurse, Chancellor of the University of Bristol, and I am delighted to welcome you all to this very special occasion. I would particularly like to extend my thanks to Darwin College for hosting us in such a beautiful and appropriate setting. 

I now declare open this University of Bristol congregation. 

In 1675, Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Through the centuries since, scientists have often returned to the shoulders-of-giants metaphor to describe the nature of scientific progress: we all build on the painstaking work of those who have come before us. 

As I have learnt more about the remarkable life and impact of Rosemary Fowler, who today receives the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa from her alma mater, Newton’s metaphor has often been in my thoughts. This is most fitting, of course, given that we are celebrating Rosemary today here in Cambridge. Rosemary’s work in particle discovery in the 1940s, as a physicist at Bristol, paved the way for critical discoveries that continue to shape the work of today’s physicists, and our understanding of the universe. 

Rosemary completed her undergraduate degree in Physics with first-class honours in 1947, and immediately took up the rare invitation to undertake a PhD within the pioneering group led by Cecil Powell. In 1948, whilst reviewing particle tracks in photographic emulsions that had been exposed to cosmic rays, she identified a new particle, to become known as the kaon, which decayed to three pions, rather than just two. 

The publication of these findings opened a new era of research into what had been hitherto understood to be the fundamental symmetry of nature – that is to say, parity. A decade later, researchers in the United States won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work to conclusively demonstrate parity violation. In Bristol meanwhile, the Powell Group continued to make critical discoveries on using the emulsion technique they had perfected; indeed Powell was awarded his own Nobel Prize in 1950 for the discovery of the pion using this technique.

There is no doubt that Rosemary had the intellectual rigour and curiosity to pursue an illustrious research career in Physics; perhaps, like her husband and fellow researcher Peter, continuing to develop techniques for measuring and understanding cosmic rays. In such a scenario, I have no doubt that the University of Bristol alumni team here today would have spent decades writing and celebrating her remarkable discovery in 1948, and all that she subsequently achieved. 

Instead, Rosemary and Peter made a pragmatic choice following their marriage in 1949. In a country with few working women, housing shortages, ongoing food rationing and hoping for a family, Rosemary left the University of Bristol without completing her PhD, and supported Peter’s work from home whilst raising their three daughters. Until now, we at the University of Bristol have not celebrated Rosemary’s work as a physicist as we should have. 

That we are able to do so today is thanks in significant part to the physicist and science writer Suzie Sheehy, who shared Rosemary’s story with the world through a wonderful essay in Nature earlier this year. Suzie, we at the University are enormously grateful to you for reintroducing us to Rosemary and making today possible. 

Esteemed guests, Rosemary is without doubt one of the many giants on whose shoulders the physicists of today – at Bristol, here in Cambridge, and at other labs across the world - undoubtedly stand. I feel immensely privileged to present to you Rosemary Fowler as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa."