University Honors 98-Year-Old Physicist with Doctorate

Rosemary Fowler, a trailblazing physicist who paused her PhD studies 75 years ago to start a family, recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bristol, her alma mater.

***_{Rosemary Fowler receives an honorary doctorate from Sir Paul Nurse, chancellor of the University of Bristol. Photograph: David Johnson/PA}***

In 1948, during her PhD research under Cecil Powell at Bristol, Fowler discovered the kaon particle, a key finding that contributed to Powell’s Nobel Prize in Physics in 1950. Her discovery has had a lasting impact, even predicting particles like the Higgs boson, which was later identified at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Fowler left her studies in 1949 to marry fellow physicist Peter Fowler and raise three children during the postwar era, a move she described as a practical decision at the time.

Recently, she received an honorary Doctor of Science degree in a private ceremony near her home in Cambridge, hosted by University of Bristol chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse. Although honored, Fowler humbly remarked, “I haven’t done anything since to deserve special respect.”

Nurse commended Fowler for her “intellectual rigor and curiosity,” noting her pioneering work laid the groundwork for many of today’s significant discoveries in physics and our broader understanding of the universe.

At just 22 years old, Fowler identified a new particle from unusual tracks in a particle detector, which decayed into three pions. This discovery, later labeled as the K track, pointed to the kaon or K meson—an unknown particle at the time.A year after her groundbreaking work, Fowler left university with three published papers on her discovery.

Born in Suffolk in 1926, Fowler excelled in math and science from a young age, though she found writing challenging. She was the only girl in her class to attend university and was among the first women to earn a first-class degree in physics. Her three children also pursued careers in science, including her daughter Mary Fowler, who had a distinguished academic career in geophysics at institutions including Cambridge, where she served as the master of Darwin College from 2012 to 2020.

Re-reported from the article published originally in The Guardian.