Richard E. Taylor

Richard Edward Taylor (2 November 1929 – 22 February 2018), was a Canadian physicist and Stanford University professor. He shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall "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."

Early life Taylor was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta. He studied for his BSc (1950) and MSc (1952) degrees at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Newly married, he applied to work for a PhD degree at Stanford University, where he joined the High Energy Physics Laboratory.

His PhD thesis was on an experiment using polarised gamma rays to study pion production.

Research and career After three years at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a year at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, Taylor returned to Stanford. Construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) was beginning. At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that the nucleons had no internal structure.

Death Taylor died at his home in Stanford, California 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. Nobel Prize in Physics, 1990. Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation, 1971 – 1972. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997 Fellow, Royal Society of Canada. Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Member, Canadian Association of Physicists. Foreign Associate, National Academy of Sciences. Companion of the Order of Canada, 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. "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.