1990 Nobel Prize in Physics
The prize was awarded jointly to:
- Friedman, Jerome I., U.S.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and
- Kendall, Henry W., U.S.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and
- Taylor, Richard E., Canada, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
"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."
Quarks Revealed: Structure Inside Protons and Neutrons
| Experiments conducted from 1966-1978 by Richard
Taylor (SLAC), Henry Kendall (MIT), and Jerome Friedman
(MIT) studied how high-energy electrons bounce off the
protons and neutrons in a target. Their results showed more electrons bouncing back with high energy at large angles than could be explained if protons and neutrons were uniform spheres of matter. |
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Surprisingly, the experiments revealed extremely small, dense objects moving around in the protons and neutrons. These tiny particles are the quarks. These experiments paralleled, in method and results, the Rutherford discovery of the nucleus (1911) by bouncing particles off a thin metal foil. |
| Detector equipment used in the Taylor-Kendall-Friedman experiment dwarfs the worker in the foreground of this photograph. Since Rutherford's day, equipment has grown much larger as science has sought out ever-smaller particles. |
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Front row:
Richard Taylor, Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall.
Second row: Arie Bodek, David Coward, Michael Riordan, Elliott Bloom, James Bjorken, Roger (Les) Cottrell, Martin Breidenbach, Gutherie Miller, Jurgen Drees, W.K.H. (Pief) Panofsky, Luke Mo, William Atwood. Not pictured: Herbert (Hobey) DeStaebler. |
