Robert James Moon

Robert James Moon (14 February 1911 – 1 November 1989^[1]) was an American physicist, chemist and engineer. An important figure in 20th century nuclear science, he was involved in America's wartime Manhattan Project. He was a founding member of the Fusion Energy Foundation and a close collaborator of the LaRouche movement. He pioneered work on the fundamental structure of the atomic nucleus based on platonic solids.

Life and Work

From a rural background, he arrived at the University of Chicago at the age of 16 in 1928. He earned a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry under William Draper Harkins and then a doctorate in physics. Starting in the 1930s, he taught at both departments. During World War II, he played a key role in the Manhattan Project. He later conducted biophysical research in connection with the Argonne National Laboratory.

In the 1930s, Moon built the second cyclotron in the world, with many improvements over the first device constructed by Ernest Lawrence. After the war, he constructed the first scanning X-ray microscope and pioneered in optical biophysics studies on the action potential in nerves.

His study of the electrodynamic theories of André-Marie Ampère and Wilhelm Weber led him to reconsider the usual interpretation of the Rutherford scattering data, which ignores the variation in force between charged particles as a result of relative velocities and accelerations. Calculations based on the Weber electrodynamics forced Moon to re-conceptualize most of what is, still today, taken for granted in atomic and nuclear physics.

For some time he was editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Fusion Energy.^[2]

Moon model

As an outgrowth of seminars conducted with LaRouche and other scientific collaborators in the 1984 – 1986 period, Moon came up with his proposal for a geometric ordering of protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus based on nested platonic solids. This "Moon Model"^[3], published in Fusion Magazine, is inspired by Johannes Kepler’s conception of the solar system, as described in Kepler's work Mysterium Cosmographicum. The model is also inspired by the discovery by von Klitzing of the quantum Hall effect, leading Moon to believe that space itself is quantized, and that the nucleons are positioned at discrete locations, i.e. at the vertices of a set of nested platonic solids.

Notes

1. ^ http://www.jstmoon.com/getperson.php?personID=I13831&tree=jstmoon
2. ^ "International Journal of Fusion Energy". FUSION ARCHIVE. Archived from the original on January 20, 2011. http://www.webcitation.org/5vsKGIt7I. 
3. ^ Hecht & Stevens 2004

References

• Hecht, Laurence; Stevens, Charles B. (Fall 2004), "New Explorations with The Moon Model", 21st Century Science and Technology: p. 58, http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202005/MoonModel_F04.pdf 

External links

• Who was Robert J. Moon?
• The geometric basic for the periodicity of the elements, Laurence Hecht.
• Articles on the Moon Model
• Robert J. Moon, Science and Morality (video)

Persondata
Name	Robert James Moon
Alternative names
Short description	Physicist, nuclear scientist
Date of birth	14 February 1911
Place of birth	Springfield, Greene, MO
Date of death	1 November 1989
Place of death	Chicago, Cook, Illinois