Dr. Albert V Baez

Dr. Albert V Baez was friend and fellow Physics teacher of HH Priya Nath ji at Harvard. Dr. Albert V Baez was the one who told HH Priya Nathji to go because he felt that way when his mother was ill. He had at once sanctioned leave to Priya Nath from his teaching duties, telling him that he would check the examination papers of the students himself. As his boss at Harvard Summer School, Dr. Albert V. Baez, gave HH Priya Nathji immediate leave. “I realize how you must be feeling,” said Dr. Baez, “I felt the same way”

He was the father of Joan Baez the famous US Singer and had brought his daughter especially to the class of HH Priya Nath ji to make her meet him  in 1966-1967 the two summers when Dr. Albert V Baez was there at Harvard Summer School. HH Priya Nathji often told HH Shri Nathji about his Harvard boss in the Physics Department, Dr. Albert V. Baez, who had one day come to meet Shri Nathji and HH Priya Nathji at their home in New Delhi. Shri Nathji would often quote how Dr. Baez had said to HH Priya Nathji when Mahamateshwari was ill in 1967: "I know how you must be feeling. I felt the same way when my mother was ill!" 
Dr. Baez had read the "First Rays of Dawn" during his flight and felt the book gave him tremendous consolation. He kept HH Shri Nathji's picture with him even in his last moments of illness.
Dr. Baez had also read Priya Nathji's humor novel "Rigmarole" and said that he read it on the flight from New York to California and laughed all the way!

Dr. Albert Vinicio Baez, (November 15, 1912, – March 20, 2007) was a prominent Mexican-American physicist, and the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña. He was born in Puebla, Mexico, and his family moved to the United States when he was two years old because his father was a Methodist minister. Baez grew up in Brooklyn and considered becoming a minister before turning to mathematics and physics.

Baez earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Drew University in 1933 and then a master's degree in physics from Syracuse University in 1935. In 1936, he married Joan Chandos Bridge, the daughter of an Episcopalian minister. The couple became Quakers and had three daughters, Pauline, Joan and Mimi. Together they moved to California, where he pursued a doctorate in physics. In 1948, along with Stanford University professor Paul Kirkpatrick (1894–1992), Baez developed the X-ray reflection microscope for examination of living cells. This microscope is still used today in medicine. Baez received his PhD in physics from Stanford in 1950. After graduating, he developed zone plates—concentric circles of alternating opaque and transparent materials to use diffraction instead of refraction to focus X-rays. Unfortunately, much of his work had to await the development of synchrotron X-rays sources several decades later.

As the Cold War arose in the 1950s, Baez's talents were in high demand for the developing arms race. However, influenced by his family's pacifist beliefs, he refused lucrative war industry jobs, preferring instead to devote his career to education and humanitarianism. From 1950 to 1956, he held a professorship at the University of Redlands, where he continued his X-ray research. Baez took a yearlong leave to work with UNESCO in 1951, stationing his family in Baghdad to establish the physics department and laboratory at Baghdad University. In 1959, Baez accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to the Boston area. In 1960, working with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA, he developed optics for an X-ray telescope. Later that year he moved to the faculty of Harvey Mudd College, and moved his family to Claremont, California. From 1961 to 1967, he directed science teaching for UNESCO in Paris.

 Baez was the author of the textbook The New College Physics: A Spiral Approach (1967). He was also the co-author of the textbook The Environment and Science and Technology Education (1987) and the memoir A Year in Baghdad (1988). Baez was not limited to print media, though, making almost 100 films about physics for the Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corp from 1967 to 1974. Baez also chaired the Commission on Education of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources from 1979 to 1983. In June 1974 Baez was awarded an honorary degree by the British Open University as Doctor of the University.

After his retirement, Baez occasionally delivered physics lectures and was president of Vivamos Mejor/USA, an organization founded in 1988 to help impoverished villages in Mexico. Its projects include preschool education, environmental projects, and community and educational activities. In 1991, the International Society for Optical Engineering awarded him and Kirkpatrick the Dennis Gabor Award for pioneering contributions to the development of X-ray imaging microscopes and X-ray imaging telescopes. In 1995, the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) established the Albert V. Baez Award for Technical Excellence and Service to Humanity. Baez himself was inducted into the HENAAC Hall of Fame in 1998.

 Baez was the father of folk singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña, and Pauline Bryan; he also was the uncle of mathematical physicist John Baez. He had three grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. He died of natural causes March 20, 2007 at age 94 in the Redwood City care home where he had lived for the prior three years. Baez had been divorced from his wife, Joan Bridge Baez, for several years, at the time of his death. (According to the singer Joan Baez, speaking at the 2009 Newport Folk Festival, her parents married each other a second time before his death)
Underneath is a letter  written by Dr. Baez to HH Priya Nathji regarding the World Prayer Day: