Merlon Lynn Stevenson (October 31, 1923 – April 10, 2021) was an American physicist. He cofounded Luis Walter Alvarez's research group at the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

. His first paper presented internationally described

proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...

-generated mesons using results generated by the lab's cyclotron.Merlon Lynn Stevenson
by Mark Strovink with assistance from Angela Galtieri and Anthony Spadafora, Berkeley Lab: Physics Division. Accessed June 19, 2021. Among doctoral candidates he advised are George Kalbfleisch, John Marriner, and Bill Gary. In 1966-1967 he held a visiting professorship at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.Berkeley physics lab article on Stevenson
/ref> During World War II, Stevenson enlisted at Fort Douglas; following basic training, he volunteered as an

aeronautics engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: Aeronautics, aeronautical engineering and Astronautics, astronautical engineering. A ...

. The Army sent him to

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

where he was educated in mechanical engineering. He was then sent to Fort Belvoir in order to learn both the setting-up and the defusing of mines. However, he was, instead of Europe, sent to Okinawa by Army Intelligence to analyze aerial photographs. Stevenson was an avid bicyclist who, as a member of the East Bay bicycle coalition in the early 1970s, helped establish

bike path A bike path is a bikeway separated from motorized traffic and dedicated to cycling or shared with pedestrians or other non-motorized users. In the US a bike path sometimes encompasses ''shared use paths'', "multi-use path", or "Class III bikewa ...

s and bike racks for campus

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

es.Merlon Stevenson
" Reprinted from the '' San Francisco Chronicle'', published June 18 to June 25, 2021. Accessed June 19, 2021. Stevenson retired in 1991 and was named professor emeritus. Shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.MERLON LYNN STEVENSON, 1923-2021
by Karen Rosenbaum. ''Doings of the Saints''. Spring/Summer 2021. Accessed June 19, 2021.

References

1923 births 2021 deaths People from Ogden, Utah People from Berkeley, California 20th-century American physicists American nuclear physicists Particle physicists Experimental physicists Accelerator physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society University of California, Berkeley faculty Latter Day Saints from Utah Latter Day Saints from California United States Army personnel of World War II American expatriates in Germany {{US-physicist-stub