Bruno Benedetto Rossi, 1905-1993, Ph.D. in physics, 1927, University of Bologna, after four years as assistant professor of physics at the University of Florence, was named professor of physics at the University of Padua. He was dismissed by the Fascist government and left Italy in 1938. He came to the United States in 1939 at the invitation of Arthur Compton to work as a research associate at the University of Chicago. He was associate professor of physics at Cornell University from 1940 to 1943, when he joined the staff of the Los Alamos Laboratory for the duration of World War II. He came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946 as professor and was named Institute Professor in 1966. He was active in the work of the Physical Science Study Committee in developing new materials for the teaching of high school physics. As a member of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences and other advisory groups, he helped formulate public policy in the exploration of space.

In 1929 he invented the first electronic circuit for recording the simultaneous occurrence of three or more electrical pulses, which proved to be one of the fundamental electronic devices for experimental high energy physics as well as a basic element of the modern computer. His research interests included the properties of mesons, and their spontaneous radioactive decay; the nature of the high energy interactions between fundamental particles which occur when cosmic rays collide with matter; and the astrophysical problems of the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. In 1960 he initiated an exploratory search for cosmic x-rays which led to the discovery of the Scipio x-ray source, the first non-solar source of cosmic x-rays to be observed.