James C. Keck

James Collyer Keck (June 11, 1924 – August 9, 2010) was an American physicist and engineer recognized for his work on the Manhattan Project and for developing new methods for combustion engine modeling and high temperature flows.^{[1] [2] [3]} Keck was the Ford Professor of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (elected in 2002 "for developing innovative, widely used new concepts for modeling coupled chemical and physical phenomena in engine combustion and high temperature flows").^[1]

Biography

James C. Keck graduated from Carmel High School in

. [4] Keck left Los Alamos in 1946 and returned to Cornell to complete his studies in nuclear physics, receiving his B.S. in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1951. He completed his Ph.D. under supervision of Robert R. Wilson. His early interests included high-energy particle physics: Keck carried out pioneering research in photo-nuclear reactions and in spectral radiation from high-temperature shock-heated air.^[4]

In 1952, after serving as a research associate at

In 1965, Keck joined the faculty of the

After retiring from MIT, Keck advised graduate students at Northeastern University.

Personal life

Among his many life-changing events at Los Alamos was his meeting another physicist, Margaret Ramsey, one of the few women scientists employed on the Manhattan Project, which she joined in 1945. She also left the project in 1946 and went to Indiana University to pursue a master's degree, which she completed while working in physics at Cornell University. She and Keck were married in 1947. They both were employed in the physics department at Cornell through 1952.^[4]

They have one son, Robert, a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester in New York and one daughter, Pat, a sculptor who currently lives in Andover, Massachusetts.^[4]

References