Richard E. Taylor
Facts
Photo: T. Nakashima
Richard E. Taylor
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1990
Born: 2 November 1929, Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Died: 22 February 2018, Stanford, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “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”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
Normal matter consists of atoms possessing nuclei of protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. In a series of experiments conducted around 1970, Richard Taylor, Jerome Friedman, and Henry Kendall aimed high-energy electrons at protons and neutrons using a large accelerator. They studied how the electrons scattered during the collisions and how protons were sometimes converted into other particles. Their results supported the theory that protons and neutrons are composed of sub-particles, quarks.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
