Richard Edward Taylor, (2 November 1929 – 22 February 2018), was a Canadian physicist and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

professor. He shared the 1990

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall "for their pioneering investigations concerning

deep inelastic scattering Deep inelastic scattering is the name given to a process used to probe the insides of hadrons (particularly the baryons, such as protons and neutrons), using electrons, muons and neutrinos. It provided the first convincing evidence of the rea ...

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kno ...

s on

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 ...

s and bound

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons behav ...

s, which have been of essential importance for the development of the

quark model In particle 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. The quark model underlies "flavor SU(3)", or the ...

in particle physics."Nobel prize citation
/ref>

Early life

Taylor was born in

Medicine Hat, Alberta Medicine Hat is a city in southeast Alberta, Canada. It is located along the South Saskatchewan River. It is approximately east of Lethbridge and southeast of Calgary. This city and the adjacent Town of Redcliff to the northwest are withi ...

. He studied for his BSc (1950) and MSc (1952) degrees at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherf ...

in Edmonton, Canada. Newly married, he applied to work for a PhD degree at

, where he joined the High Energy Physics Laboratory.Taylors Nobel banquet speech
/ref> His PhD thesis was on an experiment using polarised

gamma ray A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol γ or \gamma), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically s ...

s to study

pion In particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: ) is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more gen ...

production.

Research and career

After three years at the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savo ...

in Paris and a year at the

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

in California, Taylor returned to Stanford.Biography and Bibliographic Resources
from the

Office of Scientific and Technical Information The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is a component of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The '' Energy Policy Act'' PL 109–58, Section 982, called out the responsibility of OSTI: "The Secret ...

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United States ...

Construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (now the

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the 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. Departme ...

) was beginning. In collaboration with researchers from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

and the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, Taylor worked on the design and construction of the equipment, and was involved in many of the experiments. In 1971, Taylor was awarded a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

that allowed him to spend a sabbatical year at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

. The experiments run at SLAC in the late 1960s and early 1970s involved scattering high-energy beams of

s from

s and

deuteron Deuterium (or hydrogen-2, symbol or deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen (the other being protium, or hydrogen-1). The nucleus of a deuterium atom, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one n ...

s and heavier nuclei. 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 In physics and chemistry, a nucleon is either a proton or a neutron, considered in its role as a component of an atomic nucleus. The number of nucleons in a nucleus defines the atom's mass number (nucleon number). Until the 1960s, nucleons were ...

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 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 ...

s that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of

gluon A gluon ( ) is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. Gluons bind q ...

s. Taylor, Friedman and Kendall were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work.Nobel prize press release
/ref>

Death

Taylor died at his home in

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the 2020 census. Stanford is an unincorporated area of ...

near the campus of Stanford University on 22 February 2018 at the age of 88.

Awards and honours

Taylor has received numerous awards and honours including: *Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, 1982. * W.K.H. Panofsky Prize, 1989. *

, 1990. *Golden Plate Award,

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...

, 1991. *Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation, 1971 – 1972. *Fellow,

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

, 1986. *Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

. *Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997 *Fellow,

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

. *Member,

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. *Member, Canadian Association of Physicists. *Foreign Associate,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...

. *Companion of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with ...

, 2005.

In popular culture

In May 2019, the announcement of the 1990 Nobel Prize for physics was featured on the season 2 finale of the TV series

Young Sheldon ''Young Sheldon'' is an American coming-of-age sitcom television series created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro for CBS. The series, set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is a spin-off prequel to ''The Big Bang Theory'' and begins with the c ...

. "A Swedish Science Thing and the Equation for Toast" featured Sheldon Cooper as a child, listening to a short wave radio as the Nobel Prize was announced in Sweden.

References

External links

* including the Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1990 ''Deep Inelastic Scattering: The Early Years'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Richard E. 1929 births 2018 deaths Canadian physicists Experimental physicists Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Canadian Fellows of the Royal Society Companions of the Order of Canada Nobel laureates in Physics Canadian Nobel laureates People from Medicine Hat People associated with CERN Stanford University alumni Stanford University SLAC faculty University of Alberta alumni Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Winners of the Panofsky Prize Fellows of the American Physical Society