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James Edward Young (born January 18, 1926) is an American physicist who was the first black tenured faculty member in the Department of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a founding member of the National Society of Black Physicists and a mentor for Shirley Ann Jackson.

Early life and education

Young was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. He attended Lincoln High School and graduated in 1941. Young studied physics at Howard University. He was appointed as a physics instructor at the Hampton Institute, whilst simultaneously completing a master's degree in acoustical engineering at Howard University. He moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research assistant in 1949 and earned a Doctorate in Science in 1953. His early research considered the propagation of noise in pipes. He was a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, Sigma Xi and Beta Kappa Chi. After earning his PhD, Young joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he began working on particle physics. He investigated pions and deuteron stripping theory.

Research and career

Young researched and taught theoretical particle physics, critical phenomena and nuclear physics in the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. He earned tenure in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, and was the first black member of faculty to do so. He was interested in the intermediate structures in nuclear reactions. He contributed to several textbooks, including Nuclear, Particle and Many Body Physics and the Intermediate Structure in Nuclear Reactions. Young was the doctoral advisor for Shirley Ann Jackson, the first African-American woman to earn a PhD at MIT, as well as Sylvester James Gates.

In 1977 Young was a founding member of the National Society of Black Physicists. He founded the society with Ronald E. Mickens, with whom he had previously discussed senior Black physicists who became role models for their students. They hosted a meeting at Fisk University to celebrate these "elders", including Halson V. Eagleson, Donald Edwards and John McNeile Hunter. The National Society of Black Physicists emerged from these meetings, an independent society led by African-Americans who "created and developed activities and programs for themselves".

Personal life

Young married E. Elaine Hunter, with whom he has one child, James E. Young III.

References

1. ^ "James Young". www.nsbp.org. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
2. Young, J. E.; Mawardi, O. K. (September 1, 1954). "On the Propagation of Noise in Pipes. II". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 26 (5): 938. Bibcode:1954ASAJ...26..938Y. doi:10.1121/1.1927969. ISSN 0001-4966.
3. ^ History, Mit Black (October 24, 2015). "Capture the MO*MIT: MIT Physicist - James Edward Young". Capture the MO*MIT. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
4. Das, T.; Guralnik, G. S.; Mathur, V. S.; Low, F. E.; Young, J. E. (May 1, 1967). "Electromagnetic Mass Difference of Pions". Physical Review Letters. 18 (18): 759–761. Bibcode:1967PhRvL..18..759D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.18.759.
5. Young, James E. (February 1, 1961). "The optical model and deuteron stripping". Nuclear Physics. 23: 40–52. Bibcode:1961NucPh..23...40Y. doi:10.1016/0029-5582(61)90237-1. ISSN 0029-5582.
6. Chang, T. S.; Nicoll, J. F.; Young, J. E. (August 21, 1978). "A closed-form differential renormalization-group generator for critical dynamics". Physics Letters A. 67 (4): 287–290. Bibcode:1978PhLA...67..287C. doi:10.1016/0375-9601(78)90306-7. ISSN 0375-9601.
7. "James E. Young, 1983". MIT Black History. Retrieved December 30, 2019.
8. "James E. Young, 1983". MIT Black History. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
9. ^ Kennedy, Hugh P.; Schrils, Rudolph (January 13, 2015). Intermediate Structure in Nuclear Reactions. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813163314.
10. Jones, C. EDWARD; Low, F. E.; Young, J. E. (January 1, 1972), Morse, PHILIP M.; Feld, BERNARD T.; Feshbach, HERMAN; Wilson, RICHARD (eds.), "Generalized O(2,1) Expansion for Asymptotically Growing Amplitudes**This work is supported in part by the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission under Contract AT(30-1)-2098.", Nuclear, Particle and Many Body Physics, Academic Press, pp. 476–496, ISBN 9780125082013, retrieved September 18, 2019
11. "Shirley Jackson". www.nsbp.org. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
12. Jordan, Diann (2006). Sisters in Science: Conversations with Black Women Scientists about Race, Gender, and Their Passion for Science. Purdue University Press. ISBN 9781557534453.
13. "MIT Department of Physics". web.mit.edu. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
14. ^ E, Mickens Ronald (February 4, 2002). Edward Bouchet: The First African-american Doctorate. World Scientific. ISBN 9789814488884.

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
• MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty
• Howard University alumni
• 21st-century African-American scientists
• 1926 births
• Living people
• Members of the National Society of Black Physicists
• 21st-century African-American academics
• 21st-century American academics
• 20th-century African-American academics
• 20th-century American academics
• African-American physicists