Kenneth W. Robinson
Kenneth W. Robinson (* 1925 in San Diego ; † 1979 there ) was an American physicist who dealt with particle accelerators .
Robinson studied at Caltech , where he received his master's degree in 1948. From 1948 to 1952 he was a research engineer at RCA Laboratories, where he worked on scintillation counters, transistors and color television technology. In 1955 he received his doctorate from Princeton University . From 1955 he was one of the main architects (with Thomas L. Collins ) of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator (CEA) of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of M. Stanley Livingston (the machine was a 6 GeV electron storage ring and operated from 1962 until 1974). There he and Gustav-Adolf Voss developed the technique of low beta insertion for beam focusing in storage rings. Reticent by nature, he was a loner, but was well respected among his colleagues and was considered very innovative.
After the CEA closed in 1974, he moved to San Diego and died of a heart attack a few years later in his apartment.
He is said to have invented the concept of the free electron laser independently of John Madey , but did not publish it. In an essay from 1958 he dealt with the radiation attenuation in a circular accelerator (Robinson's theorem is named after him, an equation between the various time constants in the radiation attenuation problem in a circular accelerator).
literature
- Andrew Sessler, Edmund Wilson Engines of Discovery , World Scientific 2007
Individual evidence
- ^ Sessler, Wilson Engines of Discovery , p. 80
- ^ Sessler, Wilson Engines of Discovery , p. 80
- ↑ Physical Review, Volume 111, p. 373
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Robinson, Kenneth W. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Robinson, Kenneth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | San Diego |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1979 |
| Place of death | San Diego |