Henry Way Kendall Papers

Henry Way Kendall was born December 9, 1928 in Boston, MA, the eldest child of Henry P. and Evelyn Way Kendall. He grew up on Moose Hill Farm in Sharon, attending area schools and Deerfield Academy, and Sharon remained his primary residence for the rest of his life. He attended the Merchant Marine Academy in 1945-1946, then enrolled in Amherst College, graduating in 1950. He earned a doctorate in physics from MIT in 1955. He did post-graduate work at Brookhaven National Laboratory and then a research appointment at Stanford, where he began the long collaboration with Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor on researching subatomic particles that would later earn them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990. He returned to MIT in 1961 to join the physics faculty there, and was later appointed to the Julius Stratton Chair in Physics. In the 1960s he was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. In 1969 he was one of the founders of the Union of Concerned Scientists, in which he remained a leader, serving as its chair from 1974 until his death. Active and highly influential on matters concerning energy, environmental preservation, and nuclear disarmament, he wrote, spoke and gave testimony on all of these issues. He and Ann Goldman Pine were married in 1972 and divorced in 1988. Among his many interests, he was an accomplished mountain climber, deep sea diver, and nature photographer. He died while diving in Wakulla Springs, Florida on February 15, 1999.