Guido Beck, Austrian physicist in Latin America (Reichenberg 29 August 1903 – Rio de Janeiro 21 October 1988)

Worked in Argentina (1943-51; 1963-75) and Brazil (1951-63; 1975-88)

First to explain the α-anomalous scattering 

Demonstred that many features of photoelectric effect don’t mean evidence for the existence of photons independently of Wentzel (1927)

With L. Horsley obtained a 1/v law independently of Fermi, Bethe, Perrin & Elsasser (1937)

Described radioactive quantum field 

One of the first to discuss the concept of quasiparticle momentum (1954)

Proposed a new space-time (1953)

With P.S.M. Macedo a new representation of the spin variables

Gave the first exact solution of Einstein’s field equations for gravitational waves as well as a demonstration that these equations don’t imply Mach’s principle (1926)

Showed that the average behavior of a harmonic oscillator according to quantum mechanics is the same as that due to the radiation reaction in classical electrodynamics (1927)

Developed a theory of scattering

Discovered the process of pair creation in a Coulomb field independently of Oppenheimer & Plesset (1933)

With K. Sitte developed a β-disintegration theory (1934)

Proposed a layer model for atomic nucleus 

Discovered the law of conservation of lepton number (1935) before Konopinski and Mahmoud

Derived a theorem about a definition of nucleon (1938)

Gave an exact solution of the equations describing two fixed particles interacting with an uncharged scalar field (1939)

BIBLIOGRAPHY  

P. Havas. Life and work of Guido Beck. Anais Acad. Bras. Ciencias 67(1-2) Suppl. (2005)