Massimilla "Milla" Baldo-Ceolin (12 August 1924, Legnago, Italy – 25 November 2011) was an Italian

particle physicist Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and ...

. She was the daughter to the owner of a small mechanical workshop.

Biography

Baldo-Ceolin graduated from the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

in 1952 and six years later (1958) became a professor in physics in the same university. In 1963, she was the first female to have a professorship (Chair of Physics Department) in the university. The discovery of the proton and neutron antiparticles led Baldo-Ceolin to co-discover antilambda, the first antihyperon, with Derek Prowse after a 1957 conference. In the 1970s she was attracted by

neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small ('' -ino'') that i ...

physics. She entered the NUE experiment at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

, where she worked within Helmut Fraisser's team to determine a value for the

Weinberg angle Weinberg may refer to: * Weinberg (surname) * Weinberg (Winterthur), a quarter of Wülflingen, Winterthur, Switzerland * Weinberg an der Raab in Styria * Weinberg Center for the Arts * Weinberg angle * Weinberg House (Waren) in Mecklenburg-V ...

. Baldo-Ceolin was also part of the Italian-French-Dutch-Norwegian collaboration regarding the

Super Proton Synchrotron The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland. History The SPS was d ...

at CERN. This collaboration used a liquid deuterium bubble chamber to explore neutrino interactions with protons and neutrons. In 1976 she started an experiment for the observation of electron-muon-neutrino oscillations, which later continued running with NOMAD's collaboration contribution (Neutrino Oscillation MAgnetic Detector). Baldo-Ceolin was given the opportunity to unfold her leading abilities during that collaborative project. She also supported the development of the ICARUS experiment and its installation in the Gran Sasso laboratory. In Padua, from 1965-1968 she was Head of the local section of the

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN; "National Institute for Nuclear Physics") is the coordinating institution for nuclear, particle, theoretical and astroparticle physics in Italy. History INFN was founded on the 8th of August 1 ...

(INFN) and 1973-1978 Head of the Physics Department. In 1998, she initiated the series of international workshops on neutrino telescopes at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Amongst others, she had been coordinator of the European Networks of neutrino oscillators. When Baldo-Ceolin died she was still a Professor Emeritus in the University of Padua, a role attributed to her in 1998.

Awards

Throughout her career Baldo-Ceolin received the following awards: *1976: Awarded the Feltrinelli Prize by the Accademia dei Lincei *1978: Gold Medal for Education and Arts (Benemeriti della Scuola, della Cultura e dell'Arte) *1995: Gold Medal for Science (Benemeriti della Scienza e della Cultura) *2007:

Enrico Fermi Prize The Enrico Fermi Prize, first awarded in 2001, is given by the Italian Physical Society (Società Italiana di Fisica). It is a yearly award of €30,000 honoring one or more Members of the Society who have "particularly honoured physics with thei ...

of the Italian Physical Society

References

External links

Scientific publications of Milla Baldo-Ceolin
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1 ...

1924 births 2011 deaths People from Legnago Particle physicists Italian women physicists People associated with CERN 20th-century Italian physicists 20th-century Italian women scientists Academic staff of the University of Padua {{-