Albert Baez
American physicist (1912-2007)
Albert Vinicio Báez ( BY-ez; Spanish: [biˈnisjo ˈβaes]; November 15, 1912 – March 20, 2007) was a Mexican-American physicist and the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña, and an uncle of John C. Baez. He made important contributions to the early development of X-ray microscopes, X-ray optics, and later X-ray telescopes.
Early life
Albert Báez was born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1912 to Alberto B. Báez and Thalia Báez. His father was a Methodist minister and his mother was a social worker for the YWCA. Albert was four when his father moved his family to the United States, first to Texas for a year and then to New York City. Albert, his sister Mimi and brother Peter were raised in Brooklyn where his father founded the First Spanish Methodist Church in New York. During his youth, Baez contemplated becoming a minister, but he followed his interests in mathematics and physics instead.
Báez earned degrees in mathematics and physics from Drew University (BS, 1933) and mathematics from Syracuse University (MS, 1935). He married Joan Chandos Bridge, the daughter of an Episcopalian priest, in 1936. The couple became Quakers. The two had three daughters (Pauline, Joan, and Mimi), then moved to California: Báez enrolled at Stanford's doctoral program in physics.
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This entry incorporates text from “Albert Baez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.