Albert Baez
| Albert Baez | |
|---|---|
| Born | Albert Vinicio Baez November 15, 1912 Puebla, Puebla, Mexico |
| Died | March 20, 2007 (aged 94) San Mateo County, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Physics |
| Education |
Drew University (B.S., 1933) Syracuse University (M.S., 1935) Stanford University (Ph.D., 1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Paul Kirkpatrick |
| Known for |
X-ray microscopy Physics education Pacifist |
| Notable awards | Dennis Gabor Award (1991) |
| Spouse | Joan Chandos Bridge |
| Children | 3; including Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña |
Albert Vinicio Báez (/ˈbaɪ.ɛz/; November 15, 1912 – March 20, 2007) was a prominent Mexican-American physicist, and the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña. He was born in Puebla, Mexico, and his family moved to the United States when he was two years old because his father was a Methodist minister. Baez grew up in Brooklyn and considered becoming a minister before turning to mathematics and physics. He made important contributions to the early development of X-ray microscopes and later X-ray telescopes.
Baez's father was a Methodist minister who had left Catholicism when his son was two. During his youth, Baez contemplated the ministry.
Baez earned degrees in mathematics from Drew University (BS, 1933) and Syracuse University (MS, 1935). He married Joan Chandos Bridge, the daughter of an Episcopalian priest, in 1936. The couple became Quakers. The two had three daughters (Pauline, Joan and Mimi), then moved to California: Baez enrolled at Stanford's doctoral program in physics. In 1948, Baez co-invented, with his doctoral program advisor, Paul Kirkpatrick, the X-ray reflection microscope for examination of living cells. This microscope is still used in medicine. Baez received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford in 1950. After his graduation, Baez developed concentric circles of alternating opaque and transparent materials to use diffraction instead of refraction to focus X-rays. These "zone plates" proved useful and even essential decades later only with the development of sufficiently bright, high intensity, synchrotron X-ray sources.
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