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Leon Lederman, a major figure of physics who won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries that helped better understand the subatomic particles considered as the pillars of the universe and who has become a passionate voice of education scientist, died on October 3 in a care facility. in Rexburg, Idaho. He was 96 years old.
His death was announced by the University of Chicago, where he had been a professor. According to the 2015 reports, he was suffering from dementia when Dr. Lederman and his family had sold their $ 765,000 Nobel gold medal to pay for their medical expenses.
Dr. Lederman played a key role in the discovery of two subatomic particles – a neutrino and a quark – which greatly improved scientists' knowledge of the composition of matter. His discoveries have been incorporated into a theory describing elementary particles and their forces, which scientists call the "standard model". It is considered the foundation of modern physics.
In the title of his 1993 book, Dr. Lederman coined an expression – "the particle of God" – as an abbreviated description of the Higgs boson, a theoretical subatomic unit that, according to physicists, could reveal the mysteries of the nature at the lowest level. . Dr. Lederman's early discoveries proved to be crucial for scientists who ultimately identified the Higgs boson in 2012.
"His work was imaginative," said Edward "Rocky" Kolb, an astrophysicist from the University of Chicago, in an interview. "Sometimes people are lucky. But many times, he has made some major discoveries, and when that happens, it's more than just luck. "
After winning the Nobel Prize in 1988, Mr. Lederman stepped down as director of the country's largest particle accelerator, the Fermilab National Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, which is operated by the University of Chicago under a contract with the federal government. government.
Leon Lederman. (Fermilab)
He then focused on teaching and launching programs to broaden the scientific culture. At the University of Chicago, then at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he taught first-year students and presented a course entitled "Physics for Poets," aimed at students in humanities and humanities.
Sometimes called the "Mel Brooks of Physics", Dr. Lederman was known for his engaging humor and lecture style. ("I'm so old," he said when he won the Nobel Prize, "I remember the days when the Dead Sea was only sick.") He brought a spark innovative to science from the Second World War. develop the Doppler radar.
"It was a cruel blow to get me, a few years later, with a Doppler radar gun," Dr. Lederman told Smithsonian magazine in 1993. "And the judge did not care when I explained that I had contributed to the creation of the thing.
The discoveries that led to Mr. Lederman's Nobel Prize were held in the early 1960s while he was a professor at Columbia University. With several colleagues – including two, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, sharing the Nobel Prize with him – Mr. Lederman has been working on particle accelerator experiments located on Long Island, New York State (part of accelerator consisted of a steel wall 40 feet thick). built from battleships to breakage.)
In the experiments, Dr. Lederman and his colleagues sent protons moving at an extraordinarily high speed, throwing them into a beryllium metal block. Particles broke down into even smaller units of matter. One of them was an unknown substance previously called muon neutrino, which had properties different from those of other neutrinos.
"Most people at the time did not believe in two neutrinos, so the discovery was a shock," said physicist and Nobel laureate at Harvard University. Sheldon Glashow told Science magazine in 1988. The experiment "was the beginning of a whole new way of doing high energy physics".
Dr. Lederman made another major breakthrough in 1977, when he led a group that observed for the first time another subatomic particle known as the deep quark, or sometimes the "beauty" quark. It was the fifth quark to be discovered, which led to the speculation that there must be a sixth because the quarks always come in pairs. The corresponding "quark top" was discovered in 1995 by scientists from Fermilab, where Dr. Lederman previously worked.
Leon Max Lederman was born on July 15, 1922 in New York. His parents, who were Russian Jewish immigrants, ran a laundry.
Dr. Lederman showed early interest in science and was inspired by an older brother who tinkered at home. After graduating in chemistry at City College, New York in 1943, Mr. Lederman was an officer for three years with the Army Corps of Signals.
After graduate studies at Columbia, he obtained a Master's degree in Physics in 1948 and a Ph.D. in 1951. He taught at Columbia until 1979, when he became Director of Fermilab in Illinois.
In 1991, Mr. Lederman became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and for many years was a strong advocate of science and education. He lobbied for the creation of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, which was abandoned in 1993 due to budget cuts. The most powerful particle accelerator in the world is therefore in Europe.
Dr. Lederman organized a training program for thousands of science teachers for public schools in Chicago and founded a science and mathematics high school in Illinois. At Fermilab, he created a program, "Saturday Morning Physics", in which experienced scientists worked with high school students.
"Children are born scientists, is not it?" Said Dr. Lederman during an interview with the Nobel organization in 2001. They do everything scientists do. They test the force of things, measure bodies that fall, balance, do all kinds of things to learn the physics of the world around them, so they are all perfect scientists. "
His first marriage with Florence Gordon ended with a divorce. Survivors include his wife for 37 years, the former Ellen Carr of Driggs, Idaho; three children from his first marriage; and five grandchildren.
In 1993, Dr. Lederman published "The Divine Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What Is The Question?" The title of the book disturbed some scientists who thought he was insolent and that he had improperly presented divinity to science.
Dr. Lederman considered "the divine particle" as a simple way to describe how the then unknown Higgs boson could answer fundamental questions about physics. His co-author, Dick Teresi, told NPR in 2013 that he had suggested it as the title of the book – assuming it would be rejected by the publisher.
"They liked the title," said Teresi, and Dr. Lederman has learned to accept it. "He said, you know, that originally he really wanted to call it the fucking particle, and the publisher objected."
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