Nobel Prize winner with area roots dies at 91

Fitch and his older brother Lyle, were presented Distinguished Service Awards by Chadron State in May 1983. Lyle, who graduated from the college in 1933, was president of the Institute of Public Administration in New York City for 21 years and was the city’s public administrator, or city manager, for two years, beginning in 1960. He died in 1996.

Fitch and his Princeton colleague, James Cronin, received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980 for what an article in Health and Science magazine called “detecting a breakdown in the overarching symmetry of physical laws, thus helping explain how the universe evolved after the Big Bang.”

Their research stemmed from an experiment conducted in 1964 in which a certain fundamental particle decayed into other particles in quantities that were as astonishing to them as to the entire world of physics, the article stated. It also said the experiment provoked reassessment of fundamental physical theory.

While he was in the Army, Fitch wore fatigues to work at Los Alamos, N.M., on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, and was one of the last survivors of those who witnessed the testing of the bomb in the New Mexico desert.

After the war, he attended McGill University in Montreal and graduated in 1948 with a degree in electrical engineering. He earned a doctorate at Columbia in 1954 and immediately joined the faculty at Princeton University, where he spent his entire career.

He was chairman of the Princeton Physics Department from 1976 to 1981 and was chairman of the Physics Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation from 1980 to 1983.

The article in Health and Science, written by Martin Weil, said one of the things Fitch liked about physics was the opportunity to be surprised, or “the delights of expected results.” He added that the work which brought the Nobel Prize was the ultimate surprise.

Both brothers said scholarships they received helped them enroll at Chadron State. In 1984, Val Fitch also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award given by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities representing Chadron State. 

Fitch also was the keynote speaker at the Nebraska Science and Mathematics 2000 Conference hosted by Chadron State in May 1992. During that talk, Fitch said most of the nation’s policymakers have little scientific or technical training beyond high school, sometimes resulting in expensive and wasteful programs.          

—CSC College Relations