Matthew Sands | |
|---|---|
 Matthew L. Sands Los Alamos ID badge photo | |
| Born | (1919-10-20)October 20, 1919 |
| Died | September 13, 2014(2014-09-13) (aged 94) |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clark University Rice University |
| Known for | Co-author ofThe Feynman Lectures on Physics |
| Awards | Robert R. Wilson Prize (1998) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Accelerator physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | The meson component of cosmic radiation (1948) |
| Doctoral advisor | Bruno Rossi |
Matthew Linzee Sands (October 20, 1919 – September 13, 2014) was an Americanphysicist and educator best known as a co-author of theFeynman Lectures on Physics. A graduate ofRice University, Sands served with theNaval Ordnance Laboratory and theManhattan Project'sLos Alamos Laboratory duringWorld War II.
After the war, Sands studied cosmic rays for his doctorate at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the supervision ofBruno Rossi. Sands went to theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1950, and helped build and operate its 1.5 GeV electronsynchrotron. He became deputy director for the construction and early operation of theStanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in 1963. Sands later joined theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) as a professor of physics, and served as its Vice Chancellor for Science from 1969 to 1972. In 1998, TheAmerican Physical Society awarded him theRobert R. Wilson Prize "for his many contributions toaccelerator physics and the development of electron-positron and proton colliders."[1]
Matthew Linzee Sands was born inOxford, Massachusetts, on October 20, 1919. His parents were Linzee Sands and Beatrice Goyette, both of whom were bookkeepers. He had a brother, Roger, and a sister, Claire, who was seven years younger. As a 12-year-oldBoy Scout, Sands was motivated by his scoutmaster, who was aradio amateur, to build his ownshortwave radio receiver. With the aid of information from theRadio Amateur's Handbook, he constructed it out of parts scavenged from old radios. He was encouraged to studymathematics and science by his high school math teacher, John Chafee, a graduate ofBrown University.[2]
After high school, Sands enteredClark University, where he studiedphysics and mathematics, and eventually received hisBachelor of Arts (B.A.) in 1940. At Clark, his physics professors were Theodore P. Jorgensen,[3] who became famous for his book "The Physics of Golf", and Percy M. Roope,[4] who participated in the rocket experiments ofRobert H. Goddard. As part of a job subsidized at 35 cents per hour by theNational Youth Administration, they assigned him to build physics equipment in the machine shops, where he became familiar with thedrill press,lathe, and othermetalworking tools.[2]
Sand went on to receive hisMaster of Arts (M.A.) in physics fromRice University.[5] At Rice, Sands took graduate courses inrelativity,statistical mechanics, andthermodynamics fromHarold A. Wilson, who was the first chair of the Rice physics department. He also completed experimental studies offerromagnetism. At Rice, Sands met his first wife, Elizabeth, anundergraduate student there.[2]
In 1941, Sands went to theNaval Ordnance Laboratory inWashington, D.C., where he learned more about electronics underJoseph F. Keithley.[6] Keithly and Sands developed twoinfluence mines, from which threepatents were derived.[7] They performed sea tests of a working prototype, but the program was stopped for unknown reasons.[2]
By 1943, Sands had become impatient with the Navy's bureaucracy. After discussing the situation with Wilson, he appeared unannounced inSanta Fe, New Mexico, at the office ofDorothy McKibbin, who had been designated to meet newcomers toLos Alamos Laboratory. After she made a telephone call to the personnel office, which had just received a desperate call for electronics people, Sands was bussed toLos Alamos. To his surprise, he was met by Jorgenson, who had just joined theManhattan Project after leaving Clark and going toNebraska. He immediately took Sands to the library to readRobert Serber'sLos Alamos Primer, which introduced him to the basic physical principles ofnuclear fission as they were known at the time, and their implications fornuclear weapon design.[2]
By this time, Sands had extensive experience with electronics and was immediately thrust into the electronics group, which was tasked with making instruments for the whole laboratory, and whose head wasDarol Froman. Within this group, his close collaborators wereWilliam Elmore,[8]William Higinbotham, andErnest Titterton. Anybody who had an instrumentation problem would come to the group for help. As a result, Sands worked withLuis Alvarez,Robert Bacher,Hans Bethe,Richard Feynman,Otto Frisch,Bruno Rossi,Emilio Segrè,Robert Walker andRobert Wilson; many of these famous physicists played important roles in his later career. In particular, he formed a close relationship with Rossi, with whom he later decided to work on his post-war Ph.D. degree.[2] Rossi was most interested in the group'snuclear electronics equipment: pulse counters and amplifiers, discriminators, andscalers. In this area, Sands designed and patented apulse height analyzer,[9] and withOtto Frisch and Elmore, apulse amplifier.[10] He also created electronics for more general purposes, such as precise temperature regulation,[11] and control of electroplating operations.[12]
In 1945, the Los Alamos Laboratory carried out theTrinity nuclear test at a remote site nearAlamogordo, New Mexico. Sands worked with Walker on apiezoelectric pressure measurement of the atmosphericshock wave produced by "the gadget", a prototype of theFat Man weapon later dropped onNagasaki. Their instrumentation worked well during a test explosion of 108 tons of TNT in May 1945, but no information was obtained during the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, because an unexpected rain shower the night before soaked the apparatus.[2]
To raise public consciousness of issues raised by Trinity,David Hawkins,William Higinbotham,Philip Morrison,Robert Wilson, Sands, and others formed the Los Alamos Association of Atomic Scientists. As a founding member, Sands put out its weekly newsletter. On November 30, 1945, this organization merged with similar groups within the Manhattan Project and atOak Ridge to form the Federation of Atomic Scientists, which soon changed its name to theFederation of American Scientists (FAS).[13]
In 1946, Sands and Elmore wrote "Electronics: Experimental Techniques", which was published in 1949 byMcGraw-Hill. This book presented many ideas and circuits developed at Los Alamos, and became a standard reference for post-war nuclear instrumentation.[14]
After the success of theManhattan Project and theRadiation Laboratory, theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) moved into a new era of "big science" funded by the US government.[15] This era was predicted in a 1945 report,Science, The Endless Frontier,[16] written byVannevar Bush, who was an MIT graduate and influential head of the wartimeOffice of Scientific Research and Development. MIT's expansion into physics was encouraged by its presidentKarl Compton and by the head of the physics department,John C. Slater. The expansion of nuclear physics at MIT was spearheaded byJerrold R. Zacharias, who joined the Los Alamos Laboratory late in the war, and recruitedBruno Rossi andVictor Weisskopf as MIT professors.[17]
Within MIT's newLaboratory for Nuclear Science, headed by Zacharias, Rossi was assigned to create acosmic ray research group. He recruited four young scientists who had been at Los Alamos, including Sands, and two who had been in the Radiation Laboratory, as Ph.D. candidates. All were more mature than typical graduate students, with several years of wartime research experience. They were paid a stipend similar to that of apostdoctoral researcher, which enabled them to support families during their graduate studies. The laboratory was funded by theOffice of Naval Research.[2]
With Rossi as hisacademic advisor, and with the aid of aBoeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft borrowed from theUnited States Air Force, Sands carried out his thesis research on the slowmuon component ofcosmic rays. He measured the intensity of low energy muons as a function of altitude up to 40,000 feet (12,000 m), and derived their spectrum at production and as they propagated through the atmosphere.[18] This information was important because most atmospheric cosmic rays are muons. Sands received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1948, writing his thesis on "The meson component of cosmic radiation".[19] Sands then joined the faculty as anassistant professor, and continued his cosmic ray research in Rossi's group.[20]
Another project of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science was asynchrotronparticle accelerator, which was designed to accelerate electrons to an energy of 350 MeV. The accelerator was funded by the Office of Naval Research and built under the supervision ofIvan A. Getting, who was a professor of electrical engineering and had worked at the Radiation Laboratory on the extremely successfulSCR-584 radar. Although its construction began in 1946, the accelerator had not begun to work by 1949. In response, Zacharias asked Sands to assist.[2] This was Sands's introduction toaccelerator physics, and with his help the machine became operational early in 1950.[21]
In 1948, Sands divorced his first wife, Elizabeth, inReno, Nevada. She remained inWeston, Massachusetts, with their two children, while Sands married Eunice Hawthorne, a sister-in-law of his high school math teacher, John Chafee, and moved with her into MIT's Westgate housing units for married students.[22][23] In early 1950, in his words:
... my ex-wife had a father who had a fair amount of money, and they decided to make trouble for me, and were going to throw me in jail as a bigamist because they claimed my (Reno) divorce was not legal and so on. So I'm famous around MIT as the person who had to leave in the middle of the night and not come back.[2]
Sands went to theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he helped build and operate a 1.5 GeV electronsynchrotron. He was the first to demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, the role of quantum effects in electronparticle accelerators. He also studied beam instabilities, wake fields, beam-cavity interactions, and other phenomena.[5]
In 1963, Sands became deputy director for the construction and early operation of theStanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). When Richard Feynman was deciding whether or not to accept the 1965 Nobel Prize—due to a disdain for the added notoriety it might bring—Sands convinced Feynman that not accepting it would bring even more attention.[24] Sands later joined theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) as a professor of physics, and served as its Vice Chancellor for science from 1969 to 1972.[1] After retiring from UCSC in 1985, Sands worked as a consultant for SLAC and also as a consultant for Bay View Elementary School and Santa Cruz High School inSanta Cruz, California, developing computer systems and physics lab activities for students.[1]
From 1960 to 1966, Sands served on the Commission on College Physics, which carried out a national program to modernize physics instruction in the colleges and universities of the United States. He helped Feynman andRobert B. Leighton write the 1964 physicstextbookFeynman Lectures on Physics, based upon the lectures given by Feynman to undergraduate students at Caltech between 1961 and 1963.[2][25] He was involved in the creation ofKresge College, where he met Freya Kidner, a student there who subsequently became his third wife.[26] He received a Distinguished Service Award from theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers in 1972, and in 1998 theAmerican Physical Society awarded him theRobert R. Wilson Prize "for his many contributions toaccelerator physics and the development of electron-positron and proton colliders."[1]
Sands died in Santa Cruz on September 13, 2014. He was survived by his wife Freya, his daughter, Michelle, sons Michael and Richard, and brother Roger.[26]
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