[8] In 1959 at Harwell, Michael Hillas and Thomas Edwin "Ted" Cranshaw (1922–2016) measured, with extreme accuracy, the charge difference between the proton and the electron.
[10] (Cranshaw was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1966 by Yukihisa "Yuki" Nogami,[11] a former doctoral student of Hideki Yukawa.
The Harwell Safety Officer William Galbraith was alarmed by the way Hillas waded around wet enclosures that housed Geiger counters for muons and had kilovolts of dangerous voltage.
His Monte Carlo computer program, MOCCA, for high-energy air shower studies, was used extensively in the design of the Pierre Auger Observatory.
[8] Hillas combined outstanding talents as a numerical modeller with good physical insight, as well as considerable ability as an experimentalist.
The concept involves using large mirrors to detect the Cherenkov radiation which these low-energy cosmic-rays produce in Earth's atmosphere.