Ernest Henley papers, 1947-2012

Ernest M. Henley was born in Germany on June 10, 1924. He earned his B.E.E. in electrical engineering from the City College of New York in 1944. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy, decommissioning and repairing electrical equipment on ships. He worked at the Airborne Instruments Laboratory as an electrical engineer from 1946 to 1948. Between 1950 and 1951 he worked at Stanford University, and received a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1952. From 1952 to 1954, he was a Jewett Fellow and lecturer at Columbia University. In 1954, Dr. Henley accepted a faculty position at the University of Washington where he remained for the rest of his career. He was promoted to associate professor in 1957 and full professor in 1961. Henley served as chair of the UW Faculty Senate from 1971 to 1972, as chair of the Department of Physics from 1973 to 1976, and as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences from 1979 to 1987. He helped create the UW Institute for Nuclear Theory and served as its inaugural director from 1990 to 1991. Henley became a professor emeritus in 1995.

Henley’s work largely focused on three types of symmetry: time-reversal, whether forces are the same forward and backward in time; parity, whether a force or interaction is the same as its mirror image; and isospin, how forces and masses of the particles vary with their charges. Experiments suggested by Henley and performed by colleagues at the UW Nuclear Physics Laboratory — now the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics — revealed new details about symmetries, and uncovered conditions when subatomic particles deviated from symmetry. His theories and ideas helped scientists assemble the Standard Model of particle physics.

Henley also wrote five books on physics. Outside of the office, he was a supporter of the UW’s Transition Program and Early Entrance Program at the Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and taught physics there for almost two decades until he retired at age 90. Henley also played the piano and supported the arts. He was a founding board member of the UW World Series, now the Meany Center for the Performing Arts.

Ernest Henley died on March 27, 2017, at age 92.