Robert Adair (physicist)

Robert Kemp Adair (born 1924) is an American physicist. He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of physics at Yale University.

Biography
Adair served in the European theatre after volunteering for World War II and was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze star. After achieving a doctorate in experimental nuclear physics at the University of Wisconsin he worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island. In 1959 he joined the faculty at Yale, serving as chair of the Department of Physics and director of the Division of Physical Sciences. Later, he studied the effects of weak electromagnetic fields on human health. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.

Books and Baseball
Adair, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is known for authoring The Physics of Baseball as well as a paper titled The Crack of the Bat: The Acoustics of the Bat Hitting the Ball. His studies into baseball stemmed from a request from former Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti to know what the scientific significance of corking a bat, wetting a ball and other similar baseball issues were.

Other publications include "The Great Design;  Particles, Fields and Creation" Oxford University Press 1987 ISBN 0-19-504380-4