Alumnus Donald Glaser won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the bubble chamber, which detects the motion of electrically charged particles through liquid and makes their paths visible as lines of bubbles. Before the introduction of more advanced particle-detection methods and devices, it played an integral role in subatomic particle physics.
Notably, the bubble chamber allowed researchers to establish the soundness of the theory of electroweak interaction and, in turn, discover the W and Z boson particles.
He is the namesake of the Glaser House residence hall.
