Eduardo Ripoll has a degree in Physics from the University of Cantabria, and his final dregree work is the first time that the history of the particle physics group in Cantabria has been recorded
In Santander, October 8, 2024
Eduardo Ripoll Cabarga is a student of the Faculty of Science of the University of Cantabria (UC) and has made, in his final degree work (TFG), a journey through the origins of the Particle Physics group in Cantabria, from 1969 to 2017. A project tutored by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, professor in History of Science (UC), and Jónatan Piedra Gómez, researcher at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA, CSIC-UC) and professor at the University of Cantabria.
Through several interviews with research staff of the High Energy Physics group at IFCA, family members of the founder of the group, Eugenio Villar, and through the collection of historical documents, bibliographic and databases; Ripoll has made, for the first time, a thorough reconstruction of the history of the Particle Physics group in Cantabria, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.
The starting point is the creation of the research group by the Valencian scientist Eugenio Villar (1922-2012), then, its evolution is studied and key events are reviewed, such as the 1983 High Energy Mobilization Plan, the participation of the group in international collaborations such as CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab) at Fermilab; DELPHI (DEtector with Lepton, Photon and Hadron Identification), and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) at CERN.
“This is a historical review of the Particle Physics Group in Cantabria, from its beginnings in 1969, when ionographic emulsions are used in the 50s, 60s, until 2017, using as pillars of this work the high caliber international collaborations of the group”, comments Ripoll.
For Montserrat Cabré, this collaboration with the Particle Physics group “has been very interesting”, by the fact of “offering a historiographic type TFG for a student to develop it in the Faculty of Sciences”. “To see how the view of a physics student today is so particular and can learn from looking at the past, to see how scientific activity is the result of a whole series of historical, political and personal factors that make a group move forward”, says Cabré. “It is an internal look at the organization of scientific work, at why some groups move forward and others do not. This has to do not only with the excellence or the capacity of the people, but with a multiplicity of factors that make the groups be able to project themselves”, explains the professor.
Montserrat Cabré, Jónatan Piedra and Eduardo Ripoll at IFCA.
The 'microscopists' or scanning girls
Ripoll talks in his work about an important figure in the history of the group, the so-called scanning girls. Pilar Velloso, Milagros Martín, Pilar Built and Rosa María Barranquero, a group of women from the group whose technical work in the laboratories was reserved for meticulously observing the traces or events left by the particles in the emulsions to extract new data and, consequently, new physical interpretations.
“At that time and especially in our field, the detection capacity was more archaic, there were no silicon detectors like today, before everything was by eye. Photographs were taken, which were ionographic emulsions through which the particles passed and left traces”, explains the physics graduate.
Afterwards, the results observed by the scanning girls “were corroborated by us to confirm or correct them before publication”, explains Alberto Ruiz-Jimeno, professor emeritus of the UC and one of the researchers in charge of the group. “I also remember Laura Bravo, Mercedes López, Begoña Sánchez, Ramón Niembro and Juan José García. At that time we all signed the group's joint papers”, Ruiz-Jimeno comments nostalgically.
Teresa Rodrigo Anoro and Alberto Ruiz-Jimeno on the cover of the newspaper 'Alerta', April 29, 1994.
The figure of Teresa Rodrigo Anoro
In the paper, the impact of the incorporation of the scientist Teresa Rodrigo Anoro (1956 - 2020) to the group, and her participation in the discoveries of the top quark and the Higgs boson, has been analyzed. “The incorporation of Teresa to the group is a very important plus at that time and in the subsequent development, it is a very clear turning point looking at the evolutionary line of the group. For her ability, for what she brought and for what she projected being here”, recalls Cabré.
“I had the pleasure of meeting Teresa, and I am sure that she would like these scanning girls to be remembered, who did a job with zero recognition at the level of visibility, a basic and fundamental work to be able to develop the work of detection and scientific work in particle physics”, says the professor in History of Science.
It is important to recognize their excellence, their capacity and their fundamental contribution within the framework of a set of activities carried out by women in research teams, “which are what finally make up the possibility of advancing knowledge in general”, concludes Cabré.
Rebeca García / IFCA Communication
