John Kadyk

1929 - 2023

John Kadyk
November 10, 1929 - February 27, 2023
John Amos Kadyk, a resident of the Berkeley area since 1959, passed away on Monday, February 27, 2023, at the age of 93. He is survived by his two children, Lisa C. Kadyk (Teresa Chiaverotti) of San Francisco and John C. (Chris) Kadyk of Oakland, and by two grandchildren, Khiven R. and Claudette M. Kadyk-Chiaverotti.
John grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, the second son of David James and Helen Jackson Kadyk. After graduating from New Trier high school, he attended Williams College and M.I.T., obtaining degrees in physics and electrical engineering, respectively. John then moved to Pasadena, CA to earn a PhD in physics at CalTech. There he met Ann Marie Ford at a folk dancing class. The two shared a love of the natural world, and in 1957 they married and moved to Ann Arbor where John taught physics at the University of Michigan. In 1959, John took a research position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then called Lawrence Radiation Laboratory) where he remained for the rest of his career (apart from a one-year European sabbatical) working with other high energy physicists to identify new subatomic particles.
On John's birthday in 1974, he was monitoring an experiment at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center when he observed a signal that was later confirmed to be tracks from a predicted but previously unobserved elementary particle, now known as the psi or J meson. For this discovery, the leader of his research group, Burton Richter, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976, shared with Sam Ting, whose group independently made the same discovery at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
John loved spending time with his family, preferably out in nature, either locally in the Bay Area or backpacking or skiing in the Sierra. John also loved mountain climbing, summiting all fourteen of the then-named California peaks over 14,000 ft, often with one or both of his children. He was also a runner and bicyclist, and he and Ann spent many years doing Scottish Country dancing together. In their 60s and 70s, they traveled the world, usually with good friends who shared their love for nature and adventure.
After Ann's death in 2015, John remained at home in Berkeley, with help from caregivers. Despite severe arthritis and spinal stenosis that limited his mobility, he continued exercising at the YMCA and mentoring students at the lab, where they worked on methods for detecting dark matter. He published his last scientific paper in 2017, at the age of 87, and remained interested in scientific revolutions even outside of physics; for example, he was fascinated by the discovery that CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to edit the human genome, and he read in-depth to understand the molecular details of that process.
Lisa and Chris want to thank the wonderful caregivers who made John's life easier in the final years, including Pascale Roger, Alyce Bond, Elizabeth Mendoza, Menchie Cary, Sara Osaba, Woeser Dolma, Martha Roberts and Jennifer Holton. Your dedication and companionship were invaluable to him and to us. A celebration of life is being planned for June 2023. For details, please contact col@johnkadyk.com. Donations in his memory can be made to the Natural Resources Defense Council or the Southern Poverty Law Center.