# Jack Steinberger

## Facts

Jack Steinberger
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1988

Born: 25 May 1921, Bad Kissingen, Germany

Affiliation at the time of the award: CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

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. Jack Steinberger, Leon Lederman, and Melvin Schwartz 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.

To cite this section
MLA style: Jack Steinberger – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Sat. 28 Mar 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1988/steinberger/facts/>