New Issue: Orbital Catastrophe Ahead? Read Now

50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: Obituary for Parity, Invitation to Flight and Strict Quarantine

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!


On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


APRIL 1957
GRAFTED TISSUE--"We discovered that the power to react against homografts could be prevented from developing if we injected an animal at a very early age with cells from the donor strain--most conveniently cells of the spleen. In adult mice the injection of such cells ?increases the mouse's resistance to a graft from the donor. But if the spleen cells are injected in a mouse in the fetal stage or very shortly after its birth, the opposite happens: the mouse becomes tolerant of grafts from the strain that provided the spleen cells, though it remains intolerant of homografts from mice of other strains. --P. B. Medawar" [Editors' note: Medawar shared the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on acquired immunological tolerance.]

END OF PARITY--"There were two mesons, called tau and theta. Tau, in the course of time, disintegrated into three pi mesons; theta, into two pi mesons. What was baffling was that in every property except the mode of decay, tau and theta were identical twins. Could they be one and the same particle? Decay of a particle by two different modes was certainly permitted by theory and precedent, but in this case the principle of conservation of parity stood in the way. Tsung Dao Lee of Columbia University and Chen Ning Yang of the Institute for Advanced Study boldly faced up to an embarrassing but insistent possibility: perhaps the parity-conservation law simply broke down in the realm of particle decays like tau's and theta's! --Philip Morrison" [Editors' note: Lee and Yang won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.]

Scientific American Magazine Vol 296 Issue 4This article was published with the title “Obituary for Parity--Invitation to Flight--Strict Quarantine” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 296 No. 4 ()
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican042007-76rW7doq8bnfflEXg6Hx4G

Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism

Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.

When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.

Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber

Thank you,

Jeanna Bryner, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Subscribe