James Edward Young

James Edward Young (born January 18, 1926) is an American physicist who was the first black tenured faculty member in the Department of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a founding member of the National Society of Black Physicists and a mentor for Shirley Ann Jackson.

Early life and education Young was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. He attended Lincoln High School, a segregated school for African-American children of Ohio County, West Virginia and Marshall County, West Virginia, and graduated in 1941. From 1946 to 1949, he was a physics instructor at the Hampton Institute, while working on a master's degree in physics at Howard. He was a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, Sigma Xi, and Beta Kappa Chi. After earning his PhD, Young joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he began working on particle physics. He investigated pions and deuteron stripping theory.

Research and career Young researched and taught theoretical particle physics, critical phenomena, and nuclear physics in the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. He earned tenure in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, and was the first black member of faculty to do so. He was interested in the intermediate structures in nuclear reactions. He contributed to several textbooks, including Nuclear, Particle and Many Body Physics and the Intermediate Structure in Nuclear Reactions.

In 1977, Young was a founding member of the National Society of Black Physicists. He founded the society with Ronald E. Mickens, with whom he had previously discussed senior Black physicists who became role models for their students. They hosted a meeting at Fisk University to celebrate these "elders", including Halson V. Eagleson, Donald Edwards, and John McNeile Hunter. The National Society of Black Physicists emerged from these meetings, an independent society led by African-Americans who "created and developed activities and programs for themselves".

In 2025, Young is recognized as Professor of Physics, Emeritus'', at MIT.

Personal life Young married E. Elaine Hunter, with whom he has one child, James E. Young III.