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Wendell Hinkle Furry (February 18, 1907 – December 17, 1984) was a professor of physics at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
who made contributions to theoretical and particle physics. The Furry theorem is named after him.


Early life

Furry was born in Prairieton, Indiana on February 18. 1907.Birth and death dates from U.S. Social Security Death Index, as recorded a

Access date 2009-10-4.
He earned an A.B. degree from
DePauw University DePauw University is a private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is ...
in 1928 and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1930 and 1932, respectively.Wendell Furry, Array of Contemporary American Physicists
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Career

Furry made contributions to the early development of
Quantum Field Theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
with
J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...
,
Vladimir Fock Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock (or Fok; russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Фок) (December 22, 1898 – December 27, 1974) was a Soviet physicist, who did foundational work on quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamic ...
, and others. During World War II, he worked on
radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weat ...
at MIT's
Radiation Laboratory The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 ...
. He was a
Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1949. 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. After several years of half-time partial retirement, he accepted full retirement in 1977.


McCarthyism

In 1953, Furry was subpoenaed several times as a suspected communist by the House Unamerican Activities Committee and by US Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most vis ...
, and invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege in refusing to answer questions about his past membership in the Communist 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. Because of that refusal, he was indicted for contempt of Congress but the case was dropped several years later. Furry was defended by newly appointed Harvard president
Nathan M. Pusey Nathan Marsh Pusey (; April 4, 1907 – November 14, 2001) was an American academic. Originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Pusey won a scholarship to Harvard University out of high school and went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctora ...
, who refused McCarthy's demands to fire him, and also by Nobel laureate in physics and fellow Harvard professor Edward M. Purcell. He co-authored a general physics text of the time with Purcell and J. C. Street.''Physics for Science and Engineering Students,''  W. H. Furry, E. M. Purcell, and J. C. Street, 1952, The Blakiston Company, New York. He, like so many other intellectuals of the depression era, had great interest in the then on-going Russian experiment in attempting to create a "communist" society. As part of that interest he taught himself Russian and for many years supplemented his income by translating and editing Russian physics journals published by the
American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...
. He later played a significant role in the writing of Irving Emin's ''Russian—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. A soft-spoken man, but an excellent, well-organized teacher, he is remembered by his former students for his many kindnesses. 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.


Death

Furry died in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
on December 17, 1984.


Works

* ''Physics for science and engineering students'' (1952)


See also

*
Antiparticle In particle physics, every type of particle is associated with an antiparticle with the same mass but with opposite physical charges (such as electric charge). For example, the antiparticle of the electron is the positron (also known as an antie ...
*
Double beta decay In nuclear physics, double beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which two neutrons are simultaneously transformed into two protons, or vice versa, inside an atomic nucleus. As in single beta decay, this process allows the atom to move clos ...
*
Neutrinoless double beta decay The neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a commonly proposed and experimentally pursued theoretical radioactive decay process that would prove a Majorana nature of the neutrino particle. To this day, it has not been found. The discovery o ...


References


External links


Oral history interview transcript with Wendell Furry on 9 August 1971, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Furry, Wendel H. 1907 births 1984 deaths People from Vigo County, Indiana 20th-century American physicists Harvard University faculty DePauw University alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society