Frederick Kantor (July 19, 1942 – May 15, 2020) was an American physicist and inventor. He is known for his early work on

digital physics Digital physics is a speculative idea that the universe can be conceived of as a vast, digital computation device, or as the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program. The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was ...

, originally coined by Kantor as ''information mechanics'' which described "previously thought dissimilar phenomena, such as the

fine structure constant In physics, the fine-structure constant, also known as the Sommerfeld constant, commonly denoted by (the Greek letter ''alpha''), is a fundamental physical constant which quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between ele ...

(on the scale of the very small) and cosmological red shift (on the scale of the very large)".

Greg Bear Gregory Dale Bear (August 20, 1951 – November 19, 2022) was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict ('' Forge of God'' books), parallel universes ('' The Way'' series), ...

cited Kantor's ''Information Mechanics'' as an inspiration for his 1990 novel ''Heads''. A

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

editor named delverofsecrets created an

Internet hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

involving an apparently chance meeting of Kantor and hundreds of Reddit followers at

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in Manhattan on July 12, 2012; the crowd was eventually dispersed by the New York Police Department.

Early life and education

Kantor earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. For his doctoral thesis, he invented a way to polish the surfaces of an X-ray telescope.

Inventions

In addition to his efforts in

Kantor holds numerous patents. The later patents deal with several classes of inventions: Rotary Inertial Thermodynamics; dynamic transport of waste fluids in rivers; and a fiber-optic device for persons with macular degeneration. Another invention, never patented, was a File Content Signature utility that was used by electronic bulletin board operators to identify duplicates.

X-ray telescope

However, the invention with potentially greatest impact at present is his earliest work on "Glancing-incidence radiation focusing device having a plurality of members with tension-polished reflecting surfaces". This patent, available at Google patents clearly shows the concentric glancing incidence design for X-ray collection. Kantor's innovation, the use of surface tension to achieve a super-smooth reflecting surface is at the heart of the proposed NASA Lynx Observatory, which describes the same physical process as "grazing incidence.". Kantor's work, part of his doctoral project at Columbia University, was supported in part by government funding. It was done prior to the

Bayh–Dole Act The Bayh–Dole Act or Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act ( Pub. L. 96-517, December 12, 1980) is United States legislation permitting ownership by contractors of inventions arising from federal government-funded research. Sponsored by senat ...

, and Columbia did not seek any patent rights. Subsequent to his patents, designs for a NASA project were developed later by Lockheed Corporation, asserting government use rights to apply the invention. Whether the Lynx observatory will be implemented remains an open question.

Personal life and family

Kantor died May 15, 2020. His brother is

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

physicist Paul B. Kantor.

Bibliography

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References

1942 births 2020 deaths 21st-century American physicists {{US-physicist-stub Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni American inventors