Franz Newell Devereux Kurie (; February 6, 1907 in
Victor, Colorado – June 12, 1972)
was an American
physicist who, while working at
Yale in 1933, showed that the
neutron was neither a dumbbell-shaped combination of
proton
A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...
and
electron, nor an onion-shaped combination of an electron embracing the proton. Consequently, and until the discovery of the
quark
A quark () is a type of 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. All commonly o ...
structure of
hadrons, the neutron was assumed to be an
elementary particle.
His
Kurie plot is used in the study of
beta decay.
Kurie earned his B.Sc. at
McGill University in
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1927 and his Ph.D. at Yale in 1932. He then worked with
Ernest Lawrence at the new
Radiation Laboratory in
Berkeley, California before taking up an assistant professorship at
Indiana University Bloomington.
He spent World War II working at the US Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory in
San Diego, and after holding postwar positions at
Washington University in St. Louis and the
Naval Research Laboratory in
Washington, DC, he returned to San Diego as technical director of what had by then been renamed the
US Navy Electronics Laboratory. He continued to head the San Diego laboratory until he was debilitated by a serious stroke in 1960.
Kurie was awarded the
President's Certificate of Merit for his wartime work, and was given the
Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1961.
References
1907 births
1972 deaths
American nuclear physicists
Washington University physicists
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
McGill University alumni
Yale University alumni
Indiana University Bloomington faculty
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