Obituary - Albert Baez

Albert V. Baez, the co-inventor of X-ray focusing optics, has died at the age of 94 in San Mateo County, Calif. Born in Puebla, Mexico, and raised in Brooklyn, Dr. Baez earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Drew University, a master's in math from Syracuse University and a Ph.D in physics from Stanford University. Dr. Baez was a physics professor at several universities, including the University of Redlands, Stanford, MIT, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard. In 1948, while he was still a graduate student at Stanford, Baez and his supervisor, physics professor Paul Kirkpatrick, developed a grazing-incidence X-ray mirror for focusing optics, which has since been used in X-ray microscopes and X-ray telescopes all over the world. Recent technological advancements have taken their innovation to the state-of-the-art level, and X-ray microscopes with Kirkpatrick-Baez-type mirrors can now achieve a spatial resolution of less than 50 nm. Professor Baez switched from experimental physics during the cold war to a career in physics education. In 1951, he worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, moving with his family to Iraq, where he directed the UNESCO mission there and worked as a professor of physics at Baghdad University. Dr. Baez was the father of folk singers Joan Baez and Mimi Farina. The Los Angeles Times (March 23, 2007) carries an obituary written by Valerie J. Nelson. For details of the Kirkpatrick-Baez-type mirror, see the paper, P. Kirkpatrick and A. Baez, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38, 766 (1948).