David R. Nygren

David Robert Nygren ( born December 30, 1938) is an American experimental particle physicists.

Nygren studied at Whitman College ( Bachelor's degree in Mathematics 1960), there it was in 1959 because of racist failures Nygren against black fellow students to a plenary session, but refrained from punishing Nygren. Nygren received his doctorate in 1967 at the University of Washington. After that, he was at Columbia University where he was Associate Professor in 1969. Since 1973 he is at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, from 1975 as a Senior Fellow and from 2000 as a Distinguished Scientist.

He is also known by the development of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC ), a gas-filled tube with wire chambers which provides a high-resolution three-dimensional image of particle collisions at the same time the particle types can be determined. A first such detector was ( built under Nygren line ) from 1981 to 1989 operated at SLAC in the PEP -4 detector. Other such detectors were operated for example at KEK in Japan and the LEP ring at CERN.

In 1985 he received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award and in 1998 he was awarded the Panofsky Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2000 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.