Albert Baez

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Albert Vinicio Baez (born November 15, 1912 in Puebla , Mexico , † March 20, 2007 in Redwood City , California ) was an American physicist .

Live and act

When Baez was two years old, his family moved to the United States and he grew up in Brooklyn . At first he wanted to be a pastor before he turned to mathematics and physics . Baez married Joan Bridge and moved to California . He studied at Drew University with a bachelor's degree in 1933 and mathematics and physics at Syracuse University with a master's degree in 1935, was an instructor at Morris Jr. College from 1936, then at Drew University in 1938, at Wagner College from 1940 and from 1944 Instructor and then research physicist at Stanford University , where he received his PhD in physics in 1950. As a graduate student there in 1948, together with his professor Paul H. Kirkpatrick, he developed the X-ray microscope for examining living cells, which is still used in medicine today.

In 1951/52 he worked in the Aeronautical Laboratory of Cornell University , but then, due to his pacifist convictions, turned to teaching tasks and later became involved in development aid. In 1951/52 he was head of the Technical Assistant Mission at Unesco Baghdad and professor at the university there, where his family also moved. He then returned to California and was a physics professor at the University of Redlands from 1951 to 1956. He was also a visiting professor at Stanford University from 1956 to 1958 and made educational films for the Physical Science Study Committee (1958 to 1960) - he later continued this for the Encyclopedia Britannica. In 1960/61 he was an Associate Professor at Harvey Mudd College and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . From 1967 to 1974 he was an advisor to UNESCO and the UN for teaching science and technology. In 1971/72 he was visiting professor at the Open University and in 1973 at the University of Maryland. In the late 1970s he set up a teaching project on electronics in Algeria and was chairman of the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Gland, Switzerland, from 1979 to 1984.

Baez is the author of a college physics textbook, The New College Physics: A Spiral Approach (1967). He is also a co-author of The Environment and Science and Technology Education (1987). Together with his wife Joan, he wrote A Year in Baghdad (1988), a report on the time they lived in Iraq .

He was president of Vivamos Mejor , an organization set up to help impoverished villages in Mexico. In 1995, HENAAC , the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation , introduced the Albert V. Baez Award for Technical Excellence and Service to Humanity . In 1998, Baez was inducted into the HENAAC Hall of Fame . In 1991 he received the Dennis Gabor Award from the International Society of Optical Engineering. In 1974 he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University and in 1991 one from Drew University.

Baez is the father of folk singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña and the uncle of the mathematical physicist John Baez .

literature

  • Albert V. Baez and Joan Baez: A Year in Baghdad , Santa Barbara, CA: Daniel & Daniel Pub, 1988, ISBN 0936784385
  • Paul Liberatore, "Noted scientist was father of Joan Baez and Mimi Farina", obituary for Albert Baez in the Marin Independent Journal , online March 20, 2007 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
personal data
SURNAME Baez, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baez, Albert Vinicio; Baez, AV
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Puebla , Mexico
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 2007
Place of death Redwood City , California, USA