Leon Lederman

Founder and Resident Scholar, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Director Emeritus, Fermilab, and Pritzker Professor of Science, Illinois Institute of Technology

October 15, 2009 — 4:10 PM
International House Auditorium — 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley

Add to Google Calendar 10/15/2009 4:10 PM 10/15/2009 6:00 PM America/Los_Angeles A Sense of Wonder

About the Lecture This lecture will be a personal story of the interesting experiences Dr. Lederman had after being discharged from the U.S. Army after WWII. From a returning troop ship docking at the Battery in New York, he hastened … Continued

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About the Lecture

This lecture will be a personal story of the interesting experiences Dr. Lederman had after being discharged from the U.S. Army after WWII. From a returning troop ship docking at the Battery in New York, he hastened uptown to register as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. His story sketches major events from there to a party in Stockholm (the Nobel Prize celebration).

About Leon Lederman

Leon Lederman is internationally renowned for his research on neutrinos, ghostlike particles that pass through everything in the universe, and on subatomic particles known as quarks. He received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982 for discovering the bottom quark, which established the existence of a third generation of quarks. In 1988, Lederman was co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger) for his discovery of the muon neutrino, proving that there are at least two families of neutrinos. The experiment’s use of the first-ever neutrino beam paved the way for scientists to use these particles in research around the world. Neutrinos have since been used as a way of analyzing everything from the structure of the atomic nucleus to the energy level of an exploding star, or supernova. His research has provided major advances in the understanding of “weak interactions,” one of the fundamental nuclear forces. In addition to his work as a researcher, Lederman is also a leading proponent of science and math education at the high school and college level. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) in 1986 and has served as Resident Scholar since 1998. IMSA is an internationally-recognized educational institution for developing talent and stimulating excellence in teaching and learning in mathematics, science and technology. Lederman is also an outspoken advocate for the “Physics First” movement, which seeks to rearrange the current high school science curriculum so that physics precedes chemistry and biology. Lederman has published over 300 papers and co-authored the books, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What Is the Question? (1989) and From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery (1995).


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