Clifford Charles Butler

Sir Clifford Charles Butler FRS (20 May 1922 – 30 June 1999) was an English physicist, best known for the discovery of the hyperon and meson types of particles. In later life, Butler was involved in educational policy, serving as director of the Nuffield Foundation and vice-chancellor of Loughborough University.

Butler was born in Reading on 20 May 1922, the son of Charles Hannington James Butler, a clerk and buyer to a local wholesale grocer, and his wife Olive Pembroke. He attended both Reading School and the University of Reading, becoming both a Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy there. He was appointed assistant lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester in 1945, and lecturer in 1947. In the same year he married Kathleen Betty Collins. They had two daughters. He died in Leicester on 30 June 1999.

At Manchester, Butler worked with G. D. Rochester, studying cosmic rays using a cloud chamber. During this research, they found two unexpected events, one in October 1946 and one in May 1947, showing previously unknown particles. These V particles were a thousand times heavier than the electron and long-lived on nuclear timescales. In order to increase the rate of detection with a higher flux of cosmic rays, the equipment was moved to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre observatory in the Pyrenees. The existence of the particles was confirmed by a group from the California Institute of Technology led by Carl Anderson, and the Butler group continued to study them and found that there were two types, hyperons and mesons. Butler's and Rochester's discovery may be seen as the first step towards understanding of the quark structure of matter.

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