William Duane (physicist)

William Duane (February 17, 1872, at Philadelphia – March 7, 1935, in Devon, Pennsylvania) was an American physicist. A coworker of Marie Curie, he developed a method for generating quantities of radon in the laboratory.

Biography

File:Duane Physics.jpg

Display about Duane at the University of Colorado Boulder

Studies

• 1888-1892 University of Pennsylvania
• 1892-1895 Harvard University
• 1895 Universities of Göttingen (as a Tyndall Fellow)
• 1895-1897 Berlin

doctor father: Max Planck

Academic career

• 1898-1907 professor at the University of Colorado
• 1908-1913 at the laboratory of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris
• 1913-1917 assistant professor of physics at Harvard University
• 1917-1934 professor of biophysics at Harvard University

research activities

• radioactivity
• X-ray spectroscopy, Duane-Hunt law, relating the minimum wavelength of X-rays to the threshold voltage of the cathode rays that excite them; and Duane's hypothesis of quantized translative momemtum transfer.

Death

Starting in 1925, Duane began suffering a continual decline in health brought on by diabetes. This culminated in his death on 7 March 1935 due to his second paralytic stroke.

Honours and awards

The physics department building in the University of Colorado Boulder is named after him. In 1923 Duane was awarded the Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences.

External links

• Biography/Bibliography by Nobel Laureate P.W. Bridgman
• Britannica article on Duane-Hunt law
• Duane's "Radon Cow" described
• The Birth of Nuclear Medicine Instrumentation: Blumgart and Yens, 1925 -- Patton 44 (8): 1362 -- The Journal of Nuclear Medicine
• Outline of history of nuclear medicine
• The Transfer in Quanta of Radiation Momentum to Matter -- Duane 9 (5): 158 -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Discussion of Duane's quantum theory of diffraction in History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science by Thomas J. Hickey with free downloads