 David Noel Ferguson Dunbar

An experimental nuclear physicist who coauthored the 1953 observation of a carbon-12 excited state associated with the Hoyle state. The team analyzed alpha particles from a nitrogen-14 reaction with deuterons using magnetic momentum selection, inferring the residual carbon-12 excitation from the spectrum. The paper explicitly acknowledges Fred Hoyle for pointing out the level's astrophysical significance.^[ref]