Leon M. Lederman

Facts

Leon M. Lederman

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Leon M. Lederman
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1988

Born: 15 July 1922, New York, NY, USA

Died: 3 October 2018, Rexburg, ID, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL, 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”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

In decays of certain elementary particles, neutrinos are produced; particles that occasionally interact with matter to produce electrons. Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger managed to create 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 heavier than an electron) was produced, proving the existence of a new type of neutrino, the muon neutrino. These particles, collectively called “leptons”, could then be systematically classified in families.

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MLA style: Leon M. Lederman – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Wed. 15 May 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1988/lederman/facts/>

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