George Dixon Rochester, FRS (4 February 1908 – 26 December 2001) was a British physicist known for having co-discovered, with Sir Clifford Charles Butler, a subatomic particle called the kaon.
[4] The consequence for Rochester was the winning of two awards which enabled him to spend 1934-5 working on band spectra with Professor Erik Hulthén at the Physical Institute of the University of Stockholm.
In 1937 Rochester crossed the USA to New York, where he boarded the Queen Mary en route to Southampton, arriving on 14 June.
The post of Langworthy Professor of Physics was next filled by Patrick (later Lord) Blackett, whose group Rochester joined in 1938, this time to work on cosmic rays.
But after a few months he was recalled to Manchester to help run the two-year intensive degree courses in what was one of just a few physics departments kept open during the war.
This research continued after the war, initially still with Jánossy, but later with Clifford Butler, and led eventually to the discovery of heavy V particles,[6] later determined to be K+ and K0 (kaons).
[11] George Rochester met his future wife, Idaline Bayliffe, when they were undergraduates at Durham through the Student Christian Movement (SCM), of which she was secretary.