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From page 205... ... Thus, Hughes worked at physics research-largely at the cutting edge of atomic, nuclear, and elementary particle physics -- for 61 years. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, on May 28, 1921, Vernon Hughes was raised in the Morningside Heights sector of New York City by his mother, Jean Parr Hughes, who was a librarian at Teachers College of Columbia University. Read the entire page →
From page 206... ... degree from Caltech in 1942, with the country at war, Hughes went back east to work on radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Here he joined a group directed by Burton Chance that was especially concerned with accurate time measurements -- at the microsecond level -- of the reflected radar pulse and thus target range Read the entire page →
From page 207... ... Hughes commented later that "at that time at Columbia the theoretical course work was extensive and one was expected to handle the theory relevant to one's experiment." After receiving his Ph.D. in the fall of 1950 Vernon Hughes married Inge Michaelson. Read the entire page →
From page 208... ... 208 B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S 26-year-old Hughes enrolled as a beginning piano student. He is survived by Miriam, his sons, and four grandchildren. Read the entire page →
From page 209... ... Ten years of work culminated 6 in 1972 with a source that produced a 1.5 �s pulse of a 20 �A current of polarized electrons. That source was then used to produce a high-energy polarized electron beam at the Stanford linear accelerator. Read the entire page →
From page 210... ... In his atomic physics experiments Hughes worked unceasingly to increase the accuracy of his measurements. Quantities such as the magnetic moment of electrons and muons stem primarily from the elementary electric charges of these elements as observed statically. Read the entire page →
From page 211... ... A colleague famous for an important breakthrough once said admiringly that Vernon Hughes was the only physicist he ever knew who would mount an experiment to improve the precision of some fundamental measure by a factor of two. But Hughes's attack went on unceasingly, with improvements by two, and two, and two, and two, which added up to new insights. Read the entire page →
From page 212... ... group led by Dave Coward, measurements of the deep scattering of polarized electrons by polarized protons. The large asymmetries-electrons and protons with their spins opposed scattered more than those with their spins parallel -- that were mea Read the entire page →
From page 213... ... Hughes had hoped to continue work with polarized electrons and protons at SLAC and his initial proposals were received positively. SLAC decided, however, to go in other directions at that time. Read the entire page →
From page 214... ... �, serves as a benchmark for the testing of new ideas in particle physics. The precession rate of muons moving in a magnetic field is proportional to the product of the field and (g-2) Read the entire page →
From page 215... ... Hughes understood that a significantly better measurement of (g-2) � could place even more rigorous limits to the character of the extensions of the conventional models of elementary particles that were required and that a better experiment could be conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory AGS accelerator, which by 1980 generated beam intensities, and then muon fluxes, superior to that available at CERN. Read the entire page →
From page 216... ... 216 B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S A highly accurate measurement made at Novosibirsk of the hadron production cross-section by electron-positron collisions was of major importance, because that measurement served to accurately set the hadron contribution to the anomalous moment and thus significantly reduced the theoretical uncertainty. By 2002 the collaboration had reached an accuracy of better than 0.7 ppm and the theoretical calculations were accurate to about the same level. Read the entire page →
From page 217... ... � experiment at Brookhaven (also supported by the U.S. Department of Energy elementary particle physics budget) Read the entire page →
From page 218... ... One of the committee members then said, "but what about your LAMPF experimental programs at Los Alamos? " Hughes answered, slightly affronted, "But that's nuclear physics! Read the entire page →
From page 219... ... Oppenheimer's critical report was devastating, perhaps to the point of being unfair. Yale had considerable strength in experimental nuclear physics -- with Schultz, Beringer, and Bockelman, and the strong effort in nuclear theory by Gregory Breit -- but by 1958 many of the more fundamental questions in nuclear physics had been answered, and nuclear physics itself was sliding behind the frontiers of physics. Read the entire page →
From page 220... ... Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics, both from the American Physical Society. Read the entire page →
From page 221... ... Hyperfine structure of helium-3 in the meta stable triplet state. Read the entire page →
From page 222... ... Measurement of parity violation in the elastic scatter ing of polarized electrons from 12 C Read the entire page →
From page 223... ... High precision measurement of the muonium ground state hyperfine structure and the muon magnetic moment. Read the entire page →
From page 224... ... Porello Roy by Photo Read the entire page →

From page 205...

... Thus, Hughes worked at physics research-largely at the cutting edge of atomic, nuclear, and elementary particle physics -- for 61 years. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, on May 28, 1921, Vernon Hughes was raised in the Morningside Heights sector of New York City by his mother, Jean Parr Hughes, who was a librarian at Teachers College of Columbia University.