Born: 15 January 1933, Ireland
Died: 11 May 2020
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Tara Shears. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Kernan, Anne (1933–2020), academic and particle physicist, was born on 15 January 1933 in Glasnevin, the second of four children (along with Denis, Úna and Gerard) of Frederick Kernan, a civil servant, and Annie Connor, living at 242 Griffith Avenue, Drumcondra, Dublin.
Although neither of her parents were scientists, Kernan wrote that ‘they both influenced me in that direction … Scientists were heroes’ (American Scientist, 1986). She chose to attend the Dominican College on Eccles Street, Dublin, so that she could study physics and later specialised in the subject during her undergraduate studies at University College Dublin (UCD, B.Sc., 1950–53). Awarded a first-class degree, she was the only woman in her class and remained at UCD to pursue a Ph.D. in particle physics. Part of her doctoral research was conducted at the University of Rochester, New York, supported by a scholarship from the American Association of University Women (1954–5), which enabled her to study particle interactions at the Brookhaven Laboratory Cosmotron on Long Island, New York. Her Ph.D., on the interactions of protons and kaons, was awarded in 1957.
Kernan was then hired as an assistant lecturer at UCD (1958–62) and worked in the nuclear emulsion group situated in Earlsfort Terrace. Although her research was based on the standard emulsion particle detector technology of the time, Kernan stayed abreast of the latest experimental techniques, giving a seminar to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in the 1961–2 academic session on the analysis of data from bubble chambers by digital computers, a recent technological innovation.
In 1962, with the aid of a Soroptimist foundation fellowship, Kernan moved to America to perform research at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) in the University of California at Berkeley. American facilities were world-leading at the time, allowing physicists to study the proliferation of particles that ultimately led to the hypothesis of quarks as the fundamental ingredients of matter. Whilst at Berkeley, first as a postdoctoral researcher with the Linear Accelerator Centre at Stanford University (1966–7), and subsequently as an academic at the University of California, Riverside, Kernan and her collaborators made many measurements of different baryon species and kaon decays.
Kernan joined Riverside in 1967 as a lecturer, becoming associate professor in 1968 and the first woman to gain tenure in the department. She was influential in establishing the experimental high-energy physics group there and was awarded a full professorship in 1970, later becoming chair of the physics department (1973–6).
In 1973 Kernan changed her research focus to CERN, the European Centre for Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland. She joined experiments at CERN’s Intersecting Storage Rings facility which enabled her to perform more detailed studies of particle production and to explore effects due to the strong force at higher energies. Following the discovery of the charm quark in America in 1974, Kernan led her team in searches for charm particle production at the facility, finally observing a charmed baryon produced by the strong force for the first time in 1979.
In the late 1970s, CERN scientists developed techniques to build a colliding beam facility with sufficient energy to search for W and Z bosons, the particles posited to convey the weak force (the weak and strong forces are two of the four fundamental forces known to physics). Kernan led Riverside to become one of nine founding institutions of UA1, one of the two experiments situated there in 1978. Led by particle physicist Carlo Rubbia, UA1 operated between 1981 and 1990. The W and Z bosons were discovered in early 1983, earning Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, whose innovations enabled the facility to be built, the Nobel prize for physics in 1984. In light of her contributions to the experiment, Kernan was invited by the prize recipients to attend the award ceremony.
Kernan’s own research interests centred on tests of the strong force and the production of particles containing heavy quarks. Hopes were high at the time that UA1 might also be able to discover the unseen top quark, a fundamental constituent of matter, and Kernan’s group were tasked with constructing a small, precise silicon vertex detector necessary to identify it. The unrealistic timescales and challenging technology of the project, combined with the inexperience of her team, led to Kernan calculating ‘the odds of pulling it off were at best one in a hundred’ (Taubes, 213). She accepted the challenge and won substantial funding from the US Department of Energy, but after months of effort it proved impossible to build a working detector. The experience did not discourage Kernan, who established a laboratory at Riverside to develop silicon detectors for other experiments where the top quark could be discovered.
In 1986 Kernan changed her research focus back to America. She joined the DZero experiment at Fermilab, Illinois, which was under construction at what would become the most powerful particle physics facility in the world. Her group contributed to many aspects of the experiment; the high voltage system, the trigger system and the design and construction of a silicon microvertex detector for the second period of DZero data-taking. Kernan resumed her exploration of heavy particles with DZero and members of her group were part of the team that discovered the top quark there in 1995.
In parallel to working on DZero, Kernan became the vice-chancellor for research and dean of the graduate division (both 1991–4) at Riverside, with responsibility for all graduate students and graduate recruitment. She was the first woman to serve in these positions and retired in 1994.
In addition to her research, Kernan served on many advisory committees supporting the particle physics community: the science and education advisory committee for Lawrence Berkeley laboratory, the Fermilab Programme advisory committee, the Department of Energy high-energy physics advisory panel and American Physical Society (APS) committees on the status of women in physics and on the international freedom of scientists. Elected a fellow of the APS (1975) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1987), Kernan served as APS councillor (1985–9) and councillor of the society’s division of particles and fields (1993–5). She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) by UCD in 1995. Kernan donated funds to establish the Anne Kernan Endowment, used to support annual graduate student awards in Riverside’s department of physics and astronomy. She also awarded a bursary fund to Dominican College to reward student academic excellence in the pursuit of science (2007–19).
Kernan was known amongst her peers as an accomplished and successful physicist with a knack for ‘being at the right place at the right time’ (Smith, correspondence with author), and as a strong and innovative leader who was kind, generous and supportive. She was an advocate for women in science – on one occasion not only funding a research trip to CERN for an undergraduate she had never met, but meeting her at the airport on her arrival and even withdrawing money from her own bank account to tide the student over until her funds were paid. Outside work Kernan enjoyed skiing, cooking and the arts, and frequently hiked with her brother Gerard when he lived in California in the 1960s and 1970s. After retirement she lived with her sister Úna in Massachusetts. She died on 11 May 2020 in Panama City Beach, Florida.