Who wrote the theory of electron capture?
1 Answer
Jul 20, 2014
Gian-Carlo Wick, an Italian theoretical physicist, first proposed the theory of electron capture.
He was Enrico Fermi's assistant in Rome, where in 1934 he extended Fermi's theory of beta decay to electron capture. He received the Nobel Prize in 1979.
In 1935, Hideki Yukawa, a Japanese theoretical physicist, developed the theory further. In 1949 he became the first Japanese to win a Nobel prize.
In 1937, Luis Alvarez, an American experimental physicist, first observed electron capture by vanadium-49. The next year he proved that gallium-67 decays by electron capture. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968.