Franz Newell Devereux Kurie (February 6, 1907 in
Victor, Colorado – June 12, 1972) was an American
physicist who, while working at
Yale in 1933, showed that the
neutron was neither a dumbbell-shaped combination of
proton and
electron, nor an onion-shaped combination of an electron embracing the proton. Consequently, and until the discovery of the
quark structure of
hadrons, the neutron was assumed to be an
elementary particle.