29 Facts About Matthew Sands

Matthew Linzee Sands was an American physicist and educator best known as a co-author of the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Matthew Sands went to the California Institute of Technology in 1950, and helped build and operate its 1.5 GeV electron synchrotron.

Matthew Sands became deputy director for the construction and early operation of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1963.

Matthew Sands later joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a professor of physics, and served as its Vice Chancellor for Science from 1969 to 1972.

Matthew Linzee Sands was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on October 20,1919.

Matthew Sands's parents were Linzee Sands and Beatrice Goyette, both of whom were bookkeepers.

Matthew Sands had a brother, Roger, and a sister, Claire, who was seven years younger.

Matthew Sands was encouraged to study mathematics and science by his high school math teacher, John Chafee, a graduate of Brown University.

At Rice, Sands took graduate courses in relativity, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics from Harold A Wilson, who was the first chair of the Rice physics department.

At Rice, Matthew Sands met his first wife, Elizabeth, an undergraduate student there.

In 1941, Sands went to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, DC, where he learned more about electronics under Joseph F Keithley.

Keithly and Matthew Sands developed two influence mines, from which three patents were derived.

Matthew Sands immediately took Sands to the library to read Robert Serber's Los Alamos Primer, which introduced him to the basic physical principles of nuclear fission as they were known at the time, and their implications for nuclear weapon design.

Matthew Sands created electronics for more general purposes, such as precise temperature regulation, and control of electroplating operations.

Matthew Sands worked with Walker on a piezoelectric pressure measurement of the atmospheric shock wave produced by "the gadget", a prototype of the Fat Man weapon later dropped on Nagasaki.

Matthew Sands recruited four young scientists who had been at Los Alamos, including Sands, and two who had been in the Radiation Laboratory, as Ph.

Matthew Sands measured the intensity of low energy muons as a function of altitude up to 40,000 feet, and derived their spectrum at production and as they propagated through the atmosphere.

Matthew Sands then joined the faculty as an assistant professor, and continued his cosmic ray research in Rossi's group.

In 1948, Matthew Sands divorced his first wife, Elizabeth, in Reno, Nevada.

Matthew Sands remained in Weston, Massachusetts, with their two children, while Sands married Eunice Hawthorne, a sister-in-law of his high school math teacher, John Chafee, and moved with her into MIT's Westgate housing units for married students.

Matthew Sands went to the California Institute of Technology, where he helped build and operate a 1.5 GeV electron synchrotron.

Matthew Sands was the first to demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, the role of quantum effects in electron particle accelerators.

Matthew Sands studied beam instabilities, wake fields, beam-cavity interactions, and other phenomena.

In 1963, Matthew Sands became deputy director for the construction and early operation of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Matthew Sands later joined the University of California, Santa Cruz as a professor of physics, and served as its Vice Chancellor for science from 1969 to 1972.

From 1960 to 1966, Matthew Sands served on the Commission on College Physics, which carried out a national program to modernize physics instruction in the colleges and universities of the United States.

Matthew Sands helped Feynman and Robert B Leighton write the 1964 physics textbook Feynman Lectures on Physics, based upon the lectures given by Feynman to undergraduate students at Caltech between 1961 and 1963.

Matthew Sands was involved in the creation of Kresge College, where he met Freya Kidner, a student there who subsequently became his third wife.

Matthew Sands was survived by his wife Freya, his daughter, Michelle, sons Michael and Richard, and brother Roger.