Henry Way Kendall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Henry Way Kendall | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 December 1926 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | 15 February 1999 (aged 72) Wakulla Springs State Park, Florida |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Physicist |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Alma mater | Amherst College, MIT |
| Doctoral advisor | Martin Deutsch |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1990) |
Henry Way Kendall (December 9, 1926 – February 15, 1999)[1] was an American particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman and Richard E. Taylor "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."[2]
Kendall was born in Boston and attended Deerfield Academy and later Amherst College where he majored in mathematics, graduating in 1950. He did graduate research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, involving an experimental study of positronium, and he obtained his PhD in in 1955. He spent five years in Robert Hofstadter's research group at Stanford University in the late 50's and early 60's, where he worked with Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor, before returning to the MIT Physics Department, where he remained for the rest of his life.
In the late 60's and early 70's, Kendall worked in collaboration with researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) including Friedman and Taylor. These experiments involved scattering high-energy beams of electrons from protons and deuterons and heavier nucleii. At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that the nucleons had no internal structure. However, the SLAC-MIT experiments showed that higher energy electrons could be scattered through much higher angles, with the loss of some energy. These deep inelastic scattering results provided the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be the up and down quarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluons.
Kendall was not only a very accomplished physicist, but also a very skilled mountaineer and photographer. He was also one of the founding members of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was active throughout much of his life to advance the causes of UCS. He was particularly interested in the Energy Problem and Nuclear Proliferation. He was also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group.[3]
He died in Wakulla Springs State Park, Florida while photographing an underwater cave system.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Autobiography on the Nobel prize website
- ^ Nobel prize citation
- ^ "Science Against the People: The Story of Jason - The Elite Group Of Academic Scientists Who, As Technical Consultants To The Pentagon, Have Developed The Latest Weapon Against Peoples' Liberation Struggles: `Automated Warfare'"
- ^ Obituary of Henry Kendall from the MIT News Office
[edit] External links
- Photograph, Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
- Oral History interview transcript with Henry Way Kendall 25 and 26 November 1986, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
