John Torrence Tate Sr.

John Torrence Tate Sr. (July 28, 1889 – May 27, 1950) was an American physicist and scientific journalist noted for his editorship of Physical Review between 1926 and 1950. He was also the father of mathematician John Torrence Tate Jr.

John Torrence Tate was born on July 28, 1889, in Lenox, Iowa. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska, earning a B.S. in 1910. Shifting his focus to physics, he obtained an M.A. in 1912. He then departed for Germany to study at the University of Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. under James Franck in 1914 with a thesis on the vaporization of metals.

Tate returned to the University of Nebraska as a faculty member, staying until 1916, when he became Instructor in Physics at the University of Minnesota. With the exception of brief sabbaticals to conduct war-related work, he remained at Minnesota until his death in 1950. Tate Laboratory of Physics at the University of Minnesota is named in his honor.^[2][3]

While a professor at the University of Minnesota, Tate presided over the growth of Physical Review into a high impact journal. Physicist John H. Van Vleck, who was a colleague of Tate's at Minnesota from 1923 to 1928, recalled that in the early 20th century "The Physical Review was only so-so, especially in theory, and in 1922 I was greatly pleased that my doctor's thesis was accepted for publication by the Philosophical Magazine in England . . . By 1930 or so, the relative standings of The Physical Review and Philosophical Magazine were interchanged."^[4]Alfred Nier and John Van Vleck credited the rapid growth of the journal's size and influence in the 1920s to Tate's sensitivity to the importance of the emerging quantum revolution, and in particular the rapidity with which he published papers relating to quantum phenomena.^[3]

في الأول من يونيو عام ١٩٣٦، تلقى تيت، بصفته محرر مجلة " فيزيكال ريفيو" ، بحثًا من ألبرت أينشتاين وناثان روزن . أرسل تيت البحث إلى إتش بي روبرتسون ، الذي كتب مراجعة نقدية مجهولة المصدر ، شكك فيها في الاستنتاج الأساسي للبحث. في ٢٣ يوليو، أعاد تيت البحث مع المراجعة المجهولة. وفي ٢٧ يوليو، رد أينشتاين قائلًا:

لقد أرسلنا (أنا والسيد روزن) إليكم مخطوطتنا للنشر، ولم نُخوّلكم بعرضها على المختصين قبل طباعتها. ولا أرى أي مبرر للرد على تعليقات خبيركم المجهول، والتي هي خاطئة على أي حال. وبناءً على هذه الحادثة، أُفضّل نشر البحث في مكان آخر. ^{[ 5 ]}

تم تسمية قاعة جون تي تيت في جامعة مينيسوتا ، التي شُيدت عام 1926، على اسم تيت. ^{[ 6 ]}