David Mark Ritson, 1924-2019
Professor, Physics
Professional and Biographical Information
- PhD (Physics), Oxford University and Bristol University
- Professor, Rochester University
- MIT, 1957-1961
- Guggenheim Fellow, 1960
- Professor (Physics), Stanford University, 1961-
- Visiting Professor, SLAC, 1993-2013
- SLAC's first Director, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky credited Ritson with independently proposing the third spectrometer in End Station A, as part of the Nobel-prize winning experiments directed by Richard Taylor, Henry Kendall, and Jerome Friedman (AIP Interview, 1997). Nobel Laureate Burton Richter also credited Ritson for the initial design and proposal for SPEAR. (See for example, Sandstone and Tile, Vol.4, no.2, Stanford Historical Society, 1980, p.7)
- Ritson was also part of the MAC Collaboration and the NAL Users' Organization, as well as a contributor to the SSC. (Riordan, Hoddeson & Kolb. Tunnel Visions, U. Chicago Press, 2015).
- Memorial
Publications
- Techniques of High Energy Physics. David M. Ritson, Interscience Publishers, 1961. (Monographs and texts in physics and astronomy vol. 5)
- Death of a salesman? David M. Ritson. [Review of Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception.] Nature 327 (1992)
- Demise of the Texas supercollider, Commentary published 16 December 1993 Nature 366, 607-610
- David Ritson's scientific papers can be accessed from InSPIRE HEP and Google Scholar.
Archival Materials
David Ritson papers held by the SLAC Archives, History & Records Office are currently being processed and are not yet open for research. Descriptions of his papers can be accessed by clicking this link and entering his last name in the search box at the upper right on that page.
Additional archival material concerning Ritson is available at the Stanford University Archives.
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