Robert Adair (physicist)

Robert Kemp Adair ( born August 14, 1924 in Fort Wayne, Indiana) is an American physicist who deals with elementary particle physics, nuclear physics and biophysics.

During World War II he was in the infantry in Europe and was awarded ( shot in the arm and head) with the Purple Heart and Bronze Star after wounding.

Adair in 1951 his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, where he was until 1953 Instructor in Physics. After that, he was at the Brookhaven National Laboratory ( where he dealt with experimental nuclear physics ) and from 1959 Associate Professor and later Professor at Yale University. 1967 to 1970 he was standing there in front of the physics faculty. From 1972 he was Eugene Higgins Professor and from 1988 Sterling Professor of Physics and 1994 he retired. He was also at the Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1977 to 1981 director of the physics department and 1987/88 Associate Director (responsible for high energy physics and nuclear physics ).

Adair also dealt with the physics of baseball, about which he wrote a book. He also advised the National Baseball League. He also examined the effect of weak electromagnetic fields on biological cells.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society (whose Chairman of the Department of particles and fields he was) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin ( D. Sc., 1994). In 1953 he was Guggenheim Fellow and 1962 he was a fellow of the Ford Foundation at CERN.

He has been married since 1952 and has three children.

Writings

• The Physics of Baseball, Harper Perennial, 3rd edition 2002
• The Great Design: Particles, Fields, Creation, Oxford University Press 1987