Blas Cabrera Navarro (born September 21, 1946 in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

) is a Stanley G. Wojcicki Professor of Physics at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

best known for his experiment in search of

magnetic monopole In particle physics, a magnetic monopole is a hypothetical elementary particle that is an isolated magnet with only one magnetic pole (a north pole without a south pole or vice versa). A magnetic monopole would have a net north or south "magneti ...

s. He is the son of Spanish physicist

Nicolás Cabrera Nicolás Cabrera (1913–1989), was a Spanish physicist who did important work on the theories of crystal growth (specifically the Burton–Cabrera–Frank theory) and the oxidisation of metals. He was the son of another famous Spanish physic ...

and the grandson of

Blas Cabrera Felipe Blas Cabrera y Felipe (May 20, 1878 – August 1, 1945) was a Spanish physicist. He worked in the domain of experimental physics with focus in the magnetic properties of matter. He is considered one of the greatest scientists of Spain and one ...

, also a Spanish physicist. Blas Cabrera received his B.S. from the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

in 1968 and in 1975 got his Ph.D. from Stanford University after defending his thesis ''The Use of Superconducting Shields for Generating Ultra Low Magnetic Field Regions and Several Related Experiments'', under advisors

William M. Fairbank William Martin Fairbank (24 February 1917 in Minneapolis – 30 September 1989 in Palo Alto) was an American physicist known in particular for his work on liquid helium. Career Fairbank was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and earned an AB from Wh ...

and William O. Hamilton. On the night of February 14, 1982, his detector recorded an event which had the perfect signature hypothesized for a magnetic monopole. After he published his discovery, a number of similar detectors were built by various research groups, and Cabrera's laboratory itself received a large grant to build an improved detector. However, no similar event has been recorded since, and his research group has since dropped the search. He is now a leader of the

Cryogenic Dark Matter Search The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) is a series of experiments designed to directly detect particle dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (or WIMPs). Using an array of semiconductor detectors at millikelvin temperatur ...

experiment. In 1995, Cabrera was elected as a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

.1995 APS Fellows

. Retrieved 2019-09-07.

References

1946 births Living people Magneticians 21st-century American physicists University of Virginia alumni Stanford University alumni Stanford University Department of Physics faculty Winners of the Panofsky Prize Fellows of the American Physical Society Scientists from Paris Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences {{US-physicist-stub