Richard E. Taylor

Richard E. Taylor was a Canadian physicist whose deep inelastic electron-scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center provided evidence for quarks inside protons and neutrons. He shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall.

Jerome Friedman: An American physicist who shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments revealing quark structure in nucleons. Friedman led the MIT group that collaborated with Taylor’s Stanford team.
Deep inelastic scattering: High-energy scattering in which a probe transfers substantial energy and momentum to a target, revealing its internal structure. This was the experimental process central to Taylor’s Nobel-recognized work.
Quark: An elementary particle that combines with other quarks through the strong interaction to form hadrons. Quarks were the pointlike constituents inferred from the scattering results.
Quark model: A scheme that classifies hadrons as combinations of quarks and antiquarks. The scattering evidence strengthened this model’s claim that nucleons contain quarks.
Henry Kendall: An American physicist who shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics for deep inelastic electron-scattering experiments. Kendall helped lead the experimental program that Taylor joined at SLAC.
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center: A research laboratory in California, now called SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, built around a high-energy electron linear accelerator. Taylor’s experiments used its electron beam and scattering facilities.
Parton model: A model treating a fast-moving hadron as a collection of pointlike constituents called partons. It translated the observed scattering patterns into a picture of nucleon constituents.
Nobel Prize in Physics: An annual international award recognizing outstanding contributions to physics. Taylor shared the 1990 prize for the experiments’ role in establishing nucleon substructure.
Robert Hofstadter: An American physicist who used electron scattering to study the size and structure of atomic nuclei. His earlier scattering work established methods and questions pursued by Taylor’s generation.
Electron: A negatively charged elementary particle that participates in electromagnetic interactions. The experiment used electrons as probes because their electromagnetic interaction exposes nucleon structure.

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Jerome Isaac FriedmanRelated: Taylor was the third principal investigator in the experiments Friedman helped lead.