Nobel Prizes and Laureates

Melvin Schwartz - Facts

Melvin Schwartz

Born: 2 November 1932, New York, NY, USA

Died: 28 August 2006, Twin Falls, ID, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Digital Pathways, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA

Prize motivation: "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino"

Field: Particle physics

In decays of certain elementary particles, neutrinos are produced, particles that occasionally can interact with matter to produce an electron. Melvin Schwartz, Leon Lederman and Jack Steinberger managed to produce a beam of neutrinos using a high energy accelerator. In 1962 they discovered that in some cases instead of producing an electron, a muon (200 times more massive than the electron) was produced, showing the existence of a new type of neutrino, muonneutrino. These particles, called leptons, could be classified in families.

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