Taylor was born inMedicine Hat, Alberta. He studied for his BSc (1950) and MSc (1952) degrees at theUniversity of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Newly married, he applied to work for a PhD degree atStanford University, where he joined the High Energy Physics Laboratory.[7]
His PhD thesis was on an experiment using polarisedgamma rays to studypion production.[8]
The experiments run at SLAC in the late 1960s and early 1970s involved scattering high-energy beams ofelectrons fromprotons anddeuterons and heaviernuclei.[11][12][13] At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that thenucleons had no internal structure.[13] However, the SLAC-MIT experiments showed that higher energy electrons could be scattered through much higher angles, with the loss of some energy.[13] These deep inelastic scattering results provided the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be theup anddownquarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds.[10] The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence ofgluons. Taylor, Friedman and Kendall were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work.[14]
In May 2019, the announcement of the 1990 Nobel Prize for physics was featured on the season 2 finale of the TV seriesYoung Sheldon. "A Swedish Science Thing and the Equation for Toast" featured Sheldon Cooper as a child, listening to a short wave radio as the Nobel Prize was announced in Sweden.[citation needed]
