Henry Way Kendall
Encyclopedia
Henry Way Kendall 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 electron
s on proton
s and bound neutron
s, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model
in particle physics."
, grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts
and attended Deerfield Academy
. He enrolled in the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy
in 1945, and served on a troop transport on the North Atlantic in the winter of 1945 - 1946.
In 1946, he enrolled at Amherst College
where he majored in mathematics, graduating in 1950. While at Amherst, he operated a diving
and marine salvage
company during two summers. He co-authored two books, one on shallow water diving and the other on underwater photography
.
He did graduate research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, involving an experimental study of positronium
, and he obtained his PhD in 1955. He then spent then next two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory
. He then 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
, studying the structure of proton
s and neutron
s, using the university's 300 feet long linear electron accelerator
. He developed a close working relationship with Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky
at Stanford.
He then returned 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 electron
s from proton
s 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 nucleon
s 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
quark
s that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluon
s.
Kendall was not only a very accomplished physicist, but also a very skilled mountaineer and photographer. He did extensive rock climbing in Yosemite Valley
, followed by expeditions to the Andes
, Himalaya and Antarctica, photographing his experiences with large format cameras. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1982.
(UCS) in 1969. He served as Chairman of the UCS from 1974 until his death in 1999. His public policy interests included avoiding nuclear war
, the Strategic Defense Initiative
, the B2 bomber
, nuclear reactor safety
and global warming
.
He was also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group
.
, Florida as a part of the Wakulla 2 Project. He by-passed two pre-dive checklist
s for his Cis-Lunar
MK-5P Mixed Gas rebreather
and entered the spring basin without his dive buddy
from the National Geographic Society
. Kendall missed turning the oxygen
supply to his rebreather and lost consciousness
and drowned. The autopsy
revealed a physiological issue that lead to his disregarding the protocols.
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman
Jerome Isaac Friedman
Jerome Isaac Friedman is an American physicist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois to parents who emigrated to the US from Russia, and excelled particularly in art while growing up...
and Richard E. Taylor
Richard E. Taylor
Richard Edward Taylor, is a Canadian-American professor at Stanford University. In 1990, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have...
"for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
s on proton
Proton
The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....
s and bound neutron
Neutron
The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
s, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model
Quark model
In physics, the quark model is a classification scheme for hadrons in terms of their valence quarks—the quarks and antiquarks which give rise to the quantum numbers of the hadrons....
in particle physics."
Biography
Kendall was born in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts
Sharon, Massachusetts
Sharon is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 17,612 at the 2010 census. Sharon is part of Greater Boston, about 17 miles southwest of downtown Boston....
and attended Deerfield Academy
Deerfield Academy
Deerfield Academy is an independent, coeducational boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, United States. It is a four-year college-preparatory school with approximately 600 students and about 100 faculty, all of whom live on or near campus....
. He enrolled in the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy
United States Merchant Marine Academy
The United States Merchant Marine Academy is one of the five United States Service academies...
in 1945, and served on a troop transport on the North Atlantic in the winter of 1945 - 1946.
In 1946, he enrolled at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
where he majored in mathematics, graduating in 1950. While at Amherst, he operated a diving
Underwater diving
Underwater diving is the practice of going underwater, either with breathing apparatus or by breath-holding .Recreational diving is a popular activity...
and marine salvage
Marine salvage
Marine salvage is the process of rescuing a ship, its cargo, or other property from peril. Salvage encompasses rescue towing, refloating a sunken or grounded vessel, or patching or repairing a ship...
company during two summers. He co-authored two books, one on shallow water diving and the other on underwater photography
Underwater photography
Underwater photography is the process of taking photographs while under water. It is usually done while scuba diving, but can be done while snorkeling or swimming.-Overview:...
.
He did graduate research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, involving an experimental study of positronium
Positronium
Positronium is a system consisting of an electron and its anti-particle, a positron, bound together into an "exotic atom". Being unstable, the two particles annihilate each other to produce two gamma ray photons after an average lifetime of 125 ps or three gamma ray photons after 142 ns in...
, and he obtained his PhD in 1955. He then spent then next two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...
. He then spent five years in Robert Hofstadter
Robert Hofstadter
Robert Hofstadter was an American physicist. He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his consequent discoveries concerning the structure of nucleons."-Biography :Born in New York City, he entered City...
's research group at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in the late 50's and early 60's, where he worked with Jerome Friedman
Jerome Isaac Friedman
Jerome Isaac Friedman is an American physicist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois to parents who emigrated to the US from Russia, and excelled particularly in art while growing up...
and Richard Taylor
Richard E. Taylor
Richard Edward Taylor, is a Canadian-American professor at Stanford University. In 1990, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have...
, studying the structure of proton
Proton
The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....
s and neutron
Neutron
The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
s, using the university's 300 feet long linear electron accelerator
Linear particle accelerator
A linear particle accelerator is a type of particle accelerator that greatly increases the velocity of charged subatomic particles or ions by subjecting the charged particles to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beamline; this method of particle acceleration was invented...
. He developed a close working relationship with Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky
Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky
Wolfgang Kurt Hermann "Pief" Panofsky , was a German-American physicist.-Early life:Panofsky was born the son of renowned art historian Erwin Panofsky in Berlin, Germany. He received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1938 and obtained his PhD from Caltech in 1942. Around this time...
at Stanford.
He then returned to the MIT Physics Department
MIT Physics Department
The Physics Department at MIT has over 120 faculty members. It offers academic programs leading to the S.B., S.M., Ph.D. and Sc.D. degrees.As of 2006, the department counts four Nobel Prize winners among its faculty: Samuel C.C. Ting , Jerome I. Friedman , Wolfgang Ketterle and Frank Wilczek...
, 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
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S...
(SLAC) including Friedman and Taylor. These experiments involved scattering high-energy beams of electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
s from proton
Proton
The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....
s and deuterons and heavier nucleii
Atomic nucleus
The nucleus is the very dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom. It was discovered in 1911, as a result of Ernest Rutherford's interpretation of the famous 1909 Rutherford experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, under the direction of Rutherford. The...
. At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that the nucleon
Nucleon
In physics, a nucleon is a collective name for two particles: the neutron and the proton. These are the two constituents of the atomic nucleus. Until the 1960s, the nucleons were thought to be elementary particles...
s 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
Up quark
The up quark or u quark is the lightest of all quarks, a type of elementary particle, and a major constituent of matter. It, along with the down quark, forms the neutrons and protons of atomic nuclei...
and down
Down quark
The down quark or d quark is the second-lightest of all quarks, a type of elementary particle, and a major constituent of matter. It, along with the up quark, forms the neutrons and protons of atomic nuclei...
quark
Quark
A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly...
s that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluon
Gluon
Gluons are elementary particles which act as the exchange particles for the color force between quarks, analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles....
s.
Kendall was not only a very accomplished physicist, but also a very skilled mountaineer and photographer. He did extensive rock climbing in Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. The valley is about long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines...
, followed by expeditions to the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, Himalaya and Antarctica, photographing his experiences with large format cameras. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1982.
Service Activities
Kendall was one of the founding members of the Union of Concerned ScientistsUnion of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. James J...
(UCS) in 1969. He served as Chairman of the UCS from 1974 until his death in 1999. His public policy interests included avoiding nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
, the Strategic Defense Initiative
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
, the B2 bomber
B-2 Spirit
The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is an American heavy bomber with low observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses and deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons. The bomber has a crew of two and can drop up to eighty -class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen ...
, nuclear reactor safety
Nuclear safety
Nuclear safety covers the actions taken to prevent nuclear and radiation accidents or to limit their consequences. This covers nuclear power plants as well as all other nuclear facilities, the transportation of nuclear materials, and the use and storage of nuclear materials for medical, power,...
and global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
.
He was also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group
JASON Defense Advisory Group
JASON is an independent group of scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists—that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni—involved in advising the...
.
Death
Kendall died while diving the cave at the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State ParkEdward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park
Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park is a Florida State Park in Wakulla County, Florida, USA. This 6,000 acre wildlife sanctuary, located south of Tallahassee, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and designated a National Natural Landmark...
, Florida as a part of the Wakulla 2 Project. He by-passed two pre-dive checklist
Checklist
A checklist is a type of informational job aid used to reduce failure by compensating for potential limits of human memory and attention. It helps to ensure consistency and completeness in carrying out a task...
s for his Cis-Lunar
Cis-Lunar
Cis-Lunar is a firm that made computer-controlled closed-circuit automatic rebreathers for scuba diving. Some of their production models were in a streamlined casing. The firm's first plan was to develop spacesuit kit. The dot.com crash in early 2000 prevented Cis-Lunar from financing mass...
MK-5P Mixed Gas rebreather
Rebreather
A rebreather is a type of breathing set that provides a breathing gas containing oxygen and recycled exhaled gas. This recycling reduces the volume of breathing gas used, making a rebreather lighter and more compact than an open-circuit breathing set for the same duration in environments where...
and entered the spring basin without his dive buddy
Buddy diving
Buddy diving is the use of the buddy system by scuba divers and is a set of safety procedures that are intended to improve divers' chances of avoiding or surviving accidents in or under water by diving in a group of two or three divers...
from the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
. Kendall missed turning the oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
supply to his rebreather and lost consciousness
Unconsciousness
Unconsciousness is the condition of being not conscious—in a mental state that involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli. Being in a comatose state or coma is a type of unconsciousness. Fainting due to a drop in blood pressure and a...
and drowned. The autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
revealed a physiological issue that lead to his disregarding the protocols.
External links
- Photograph, Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical InformationOffice of Scientific and Technical InformationThe Office of Scientific and Technical Information is a component of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy...
, United States Department of EnergyUnited States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material... - Oral History interview transcript with Henry Way Kendall 25 and 26 November 1986, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives