50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: Lysenko Retreats, Consumers Benefit and Neptune's Realm Photographed

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JUNE 1956
THE ANTIPROTON--"Since it was apparent that creation of the antiproton required tremendous energy, the most likely place to look for it was in cosmic rays. On a few occasions investigators found events which seemed to signal the generation of an antiproton, but there was never sufficient information to identify it with certainty. When the Bevatron at the University of California began to bombard a target made of copper with six-Bev (billion electron volts) protons, the next problem was to detect and identify any antiprotons created. A plan for the search was devised by Owen Chamberlain, Thomas Ypsilantis and the authors of this article. Tracks of about 20 antiprotons have now been detected in emulsions by observers in Berkeley. --Emilio Segrè and Clyde E. Wiegand" [Editors' note: Emilio Segrè won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.]

POLITICALLY CORRECT CORN--"Trofim Lysenko's personal rule over U.S.S.R. genetics came to an end in April with his resignation as head of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The event is interpreted to mean that after 15 years during which 'Mendelian' genetics was a politically discredited branch of science in the Soviet Union, it is once again acceptable. Hybrid corn, which is incompatible with Lysenko's theories of acquired characteristics, is now being planted on Soviet farms. The week before Lysenko retired from prom-inence there was an announcement from Moscow that the scientific works of Nikolai Vavilov were about to be published. Vavilov, a world-famous geneticist, opposed Lysenko's rise, and in 1942 died in exile in Siberia."

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