Fred Begay (July 2, 1932 – April 30, 2013), also Fred Young or Clever Fox, was a

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...

/ Ute

nuclear physicist Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

.Fred Begay.
lapahie.com. Accessed 2011-08-15. Begay was born in Towaoc, Colorado on the

Ute Mountain Indian Reservation The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe ( Ute dialect: Wʉgama Núuchi) is one of three federally recognized tribes of the Ute Nation, and are mostly descendants of the historic Weeminuche Band who moved to the Southern Ute reservation in 1897. Their reservat ...

.Fred Begay.
Council of Indian Nations. Accessed 2011-08-15. His work was in the alternative use of

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...

, electron and ion beams to heat thermonuclear plasmas for use as alternative energy sources.

Early life

Begay was born in Towaoc, Colorado, on the

. He was the son of Joy Lopez (

, Ute) and Hosteen Begay (Navajo). Fred Begay was only six when his mother and father, both Navajo healers, began teaching him the songs of the Blessingway ceremony. Begay spoke both Indigenous languages from his mother and father but did not learn English until age 10, when he attended a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Ignacio, Colorado. The teachers there trained him to be a farmer until he turned 18. Never graduating, he enlisted in the Army and went to fight in the Korean War. Fred served in the US Air Force during 1951-1955 and was assigned to an air-rescue squadron in Korea. In 1952, he married Helen Smith from Shiprock. When he came home in 1955, he returned to his mother's 30-acre farm with the intention of growing corn and raising children. Helen and Fred Begay had eight beautiful children: Fred Jr, Joyce, William, Janet, Terry, Christina, John and Carolyn.

Science career

Begay attended the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he earned a bachelor's degree in math and science with honors in 1961. He got master's degree in physics in 1963 and a doctorate in nuclear physics in 1971. He joined the physics staff of

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

. He was also part of a NASA-funded space physics research team at UNM to conduct fundamental studies on the origin of high energy gamma rays and solar neutrons from 1960-1963 and again from 1965-1972. He also held research and teaching fellowships at Stanford University and the University of Maryland. Begay also had a tenure of nearly 30 years in the

's laser program. Begay was profiled in the 1979

NOVA A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramat ...

documentary ''The Long Walk of Fred Young''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Begay, Fred 1932 births 2013 deaths 20th-century Native Americans American nuclear physicists United States Air Force personnel of the Korean War Navajo scientists Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel People from Montezuma County, Colorado University of New Mexico alumni 21st-century Native Americans