Richard Casten
American physicist
Richard Francis Casten (born November 1, 1941) is an American nuclear physicist known for his research in nuclear structure and radioactive nuclear beams. He is the D. Allan Bromley Professor Emeritus of Physics at Yale University, where he was the director of the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory from 1995 to 2008. He is also known for Casten's triangle, which was introduced in 1981.
Early life and education
Casten was born on November 1, 1941, in New York City. His father was a Jewish surgeon from New York and his mother was a Catholic homemaker. Casten was raised in Manhattan and attended the Quaker Friends Seminary, where he took chemistry classes and decided to pursue physics.
Casten enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross as a physics major and became a member of its honors program. The college's focus on a liberal arts education allowed him to take courses in history and philosophy, which he later recalled as having "an effect on my whole research career". He graduated from Holy Cross with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), magna cum laude, in 1963.
After graduation, Casten pursued graduate studies at Yale University with the intention to study physics under D. Allan Bromley.
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