A to Z of Physicists, Updated Edition by Infobase

Author:Infobase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science&Technology
ISBN: 9781438183312
Publisher: Facts On File
Published: 2022-09-15T17:18:26+00:00

Further Information

Hammond, Christopher. The Basics of Crystallography and Diffraction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Mendelssohn, Kurt. The World of Walther Nernst: The Rise and Fall of German Science, 1864–1941. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.

Entry Author: Leiter, Darryl J.

Lederman, Leon M.

(b. 1922– )

experimentalist, particle physicist

Leon M. Lederman shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger for the invention of the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the electron and of the muon (both now known as leptons). They arrived at this discovery by observing that the weak interaction decay processes associated with electrons and muons involved electron neutrinos and muon neutrinos, respectively.

He was born on July 15, 1922, in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants. His father, Morris Lederman, who earned his living by operating a hand laundry, had a profound respect for education. Leon would later trace the beginning of his passion for science to the reading of science books:

I got hold of a book in big print that was written by Einstein in the 1930s, which presented science as a detective story. And I loved that presentation.

Lederman attended Manhattan public schools, where he was inspired by "absolutely magnificent teachers." He entered the City College of New York as a chemistry major, but, by the time he graduated in 1943 with a degree in chemistry, he had lost his enthusiasm for the subject, "because of all the smells, that was one thing," and found physics to be "simpler somehow, cleaner." With the country embroiled in World War II, he was obliged to put off further studies. For the next three years, he served in the United States Army, rising to the rank of second lieutenant in the Signal Corps. On discharge, he entered Columbia University's graduate program in physics, headed by Isidor Isaac Rabi, the inventor of the technique of nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1948, Lederman began working with Eugene T. Booth, director of Columbia's project to construct a 385-million-electron-volt (Mev) synchrocyclotron (a device for accelerating particles to high energies) at its Nevis Laboratory. Lederman's thesis assignment was to build a Wilson cloud chamber, the first instrument to detect the tracks of atomic particles. He was awarded the Ph.D. in 1951 for this work and asked to stay on at Columbia, which remained his academic home for the next 28 years. During this time he directed the work of 50 Ph.D. candidates.

In 1958, after being promoted to full professor, Lederman took his first sabbatical at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), where he organized a group to do the "g-2" experiment, designed to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of elementary particles. He would continue to participate in CERN collaborations through the 1970s. Between 1961 and 1978, he was director of the Nevis Lab. In 1979, he became director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he supervised the construction and utilization of the first superconducting synchrotron, which became the highest-energy accelerator in the world at that time.

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