Taylor was born in
Medicine Hat, Alberta. He studied for his BSc (1950) and MSc (1952) degrees at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Newly married, he applied to work for a PhD degree at
Stanford University, where he joined the High Energy Physics Laboratory.[7]
His PhD thesis was on an experiment using polarised
gamma rays to study
pion production.[8]
The experiments run at SLAC in the late 1960s and early 1970s involved scattering high-energy beams of
electrons from
protons and
deuterons and heavier
nuclei.[11][12][13] At lower energies, it had already been found that the electrons would only be scattered through low angles, consistent with the idea that the
nucleons had no internal structure.[13] However, the SLAC-MIT experiments showed that higher energy electrons could be scattered through much higher angles, with the loss of some energy.[13] These deep inelastic scattering results provided the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be the
up and
downquarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds.[10] The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of
gluons. Taylor, Friedman and Kendall were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work.[14]
Death
Taylor died at his home in
Stanford, California near the campus of Stanford University on 22 February 2018 at the age of 88.[10][15]
Awards and honours
Taylor has received numerous awards and honours including:
Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, 1982.[16]
In May 2019, the announcement of the 1990 Nobel Prize for physics was featured on the season 2 finale of the TV series
Young Sheldon. "A Swedish Science Thing and the Equation for Toast" featured Sheldon Cooper as a child, listening to a short wave radio as the Nobel Prize was announced in Sweden.[citation needed]