Wendell H. Furry | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Wendell Hinkle Furry (1907-02-18)February 18, 1907 Prairieton, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | December 17, 1984(1984-12-17) (aged 77) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois |
| Known for | Furry's theorem Neutrinoless double beta decay |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Quantum field theory |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | James Holley Bartlett |
| Doctoral students | Rolf Landauer |
Wendell Hinkle Furry (February 18, 1907 – December 17, 1984) was a professor of physics atHarvard University who made contributions to theoretical and particle physics.[1]Furry's theorem is named after him. He was also the first to propose the search forneutrinoless double beta decay.
Wendell Furry was born inPrairieton, Indiana on February 18, 1907.[1] He earned an A.B. degree fromDePauw University in 1928 and an A.M. and Ph.D. from theUniversity of Illinois in 1930 and 1932, respectively.[2][3]
Furry made contributions to the early development ofquantum field theory withJ. Robert Oppenheimer,Vladimir Fock, and others. In 1937, he published a theorem to simplify calculation while studyingpositron reactions.Furry's theorem shows that the amplitude of aFeynman diagram consists of a closed loop offermion lines with an odd number of vertices, vanishes.
Furry, inspired byMaria Goeppert Mayer's theory ofdouble beta decay, noted that ifneutrino were aMajorana fermion (a particle that is its ownantiparticle), there would existneutrinoless double beta decay processes.[4] Modern experiments are still looking for this reaction.[4]
During World War II, he worked onradar at theMIT Radiation Laboratory.[1] He was aGuggenheim Fellow in 1949.[5]
After the war, Furry continued teaching at Harvard, later becoming a full professor and serving for three years as chairman of the physics department from 1965 to 1968.[2] After several years of half-time partial retirement, he accepted full retirement in 1977.[6]
In 1953, Furry was subpoenaed several times as a suspected communist by theHouse Un-American Activities Committee and by U.S. SenatorJoseph R. McCarthy, and invoked hisFifth Amendmentprivilege in refusing to answer questions about his past membership in theCommunist Party. In early 1954, he dropped the Fifth Amendment defense in a nationally televised hearing before Senator McCarthy and answered questions about himself, but refused to name others. He was indicted for contempt of Congress but the case was dropped several years later.[7]
Furry was defended by newly appointed Harvard presidentNathan M. Pusey, who refused McCarthy's demands that Furry be fired.[8] He co-authored a general physics text of the time with Purcell andJ. C. Street.[9]
Furry taught himself Russian and for many years supplemented his income by translating and editing Russian physics journals published by theAmerican Institute of Physics. He later played a significant role in the writing of Irving Emin'sRussian—English Physics Dictionary (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1963), a work that is still widely used today. Furry's contribution is acknowledged in the preface on p. vii.[citation needed]
As part of his wartime work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory he did significant, still useful work on radar propagation that is documented in Chapter 2 (pp. 27–180) in Vol. 13,Propagation of Short Radio Waves, edited by Donald E. Kerr, as a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory Series, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951.
Furry died inCambridge, Massachusetts on December 17, 1984, aged 77.[1]
