Leon Lederman, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/","20200917235230","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1600386750"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic&display=swap" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">  <title>Leon Lederman, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement</title> <meta name="description" content="“I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn’t doing anything else, and I didn’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good.” Leon Lederman’s modesty belied the scale of his achievements. In his lifetime, he was recognized as the world’s foremost experimental physicist, one of the very small group of scientists who have revolutionized our understanding of the subatomic world. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he participated in the discovery of the K-meson particle and the non-conservation of parity during muon decay. In 1962, with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, he designed and performed an experiment that proved the existence of the muon neutrino, an effort that eventually earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. He led the efforts that found the first anti-matter particle in 1965 and the bottom quark in 1977. As director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, he laid the groundwork for the discovery of the mysterious top quark. After stepping down as director, he continued to write and teach, and campaigned vigorously to improve science education in the United States."/> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <meta name="bingbot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Leon Lederman, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="“I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn’t doing anything else, and I didn’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good.” Leon Lederman’s modesty belied the scale of his achievements. In his lifetime, he was recognized as the world’s foremost experimental physicist, one of the very small group of scientists who have revolutionized our understanding of the subatomic world. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he participated in the discovery of the K-meson particle and the non-conservation of parity during muon decay. In 1962, with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, he designed and performed an experiment that proved the existence of the muon neutrino, an effort that eventually earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. He led the efforts that found the first anti-matter particle in 1965 and the bottom quark in 1977. As director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, he laid the groundwork for the discovery of the mysterious top quark. After stepping down as director, he continued to write and teach, and campaigned vigorously to improve science education in the United States."/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2019-03-17T18:07:21+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@achievers1961"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/","name":"Leon Lederman, Ph.D. | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2018-06-26T18:43:33+00:00","dateModified":"2019-03-17T18:07:21+00:00","description":"\u201cI went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn\u2019t doing anything else, and I didn\u2019t want to look dumb, so I thought I\u2019d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good.\u201d Leon Lederman\u2019s modesty belied the scale of his achievements. In his lifetime, he was recognized as the world\u2019s foremost experimental physicist, one of the very small group of scientists who have revolutionized our understanding of the subatomic world. In the late 1950s and early \u201860s, he participated in the discovery of the K-meson particle and the non-conservation of parity during muon decay. In 1962, with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, he designed and performed an experiment that proved the existence of the muon neutrino, an effort that eventually earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. He led the efforts that found the first anti-matter particle in 1965 and the bottom quark in 1977. As director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, he laid the groundwork for the discovery of the mysterious top quark. 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role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman2-Feature-Image-2800x1120-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Nobel Prize in Physics</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-48366 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-nuclear-physicist careers-physicist careers-theoretical-physicist role-model-difficulty-with-school"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">If you have pure creativity but you don’t know anything, it’s too bad. Sometimes it’s bad to know too much. Wolfgang Pauli complained about his lack of creativity and said, ‘I know too much!’ If you know too much, then you don’t have that fresh view which allows you to see the breakthrough idea.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Subatomic World Explorer</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 15, 1922 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> October 3, 2018 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p>Leon Max Lederman was born in New York City, the second son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He studied chemistry at City College of New York, receiving his bachelor of science degree in 1943. Following three years in the army during World War II, he studied physics at Columbia University, earning his master’s in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1951.</p> <figure id="attachment_48736" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48736" style="width: 859px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-48736 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-48736 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="859" height="400" data-sizes="(max-width: 859px) 100vw, 859px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos.jpg 859w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos-380x177.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos-760x354.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48736" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: One-year-old Leon Lederman in 1923; Leon Lederman celebrates his bar mitzvah in New York, July 15, 1935; Morris and Minna Lederman, parents of Leon Lederman. Lederman was born in New York on July 15, 1922, of immigrant parents. His father, Morris, operated a hand laundry and venerated learning. He majored in chemistry at the City College of New York, “but fell under the influence of such future physicists as Isaac Halpern and my high school friend Martin J. Klein.” After graduating in 1943, Leon Lederman spent three years in the U.S. Army, where he rose to the rank of 2nd lieutenant in the Signal Corps. In September of 1946, Lederman entered the Graduate School of Physics at Columbia, chaired by Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi. (Photos courtesy of Fermilab Visual Media Services)</figcaption></figure> <p>Leon Lederman stayed on at Columbia following his studies, for nearly 30 years, as the Eugene Higgins Professor and, from 1961 until 1979, as director of Nevis Laboratories in Irvington, the Columbia physics department center for experimental research in high energy physics. With colleagues and students from Nevis, he led an intensive and wide-ranging series of experiments that provided major advances in the understanding of “weak interactions,” one of the fundamental nuclear forces. In 1956, working with a Columbia team at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, Lederman discovered a new particle, the long-lived neutral K-meson, which had been predicted from theory. Further research at Columbia demonstrated the non-conservation of parity during muon decay.</p> <figure id="attachment_48749" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48749" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-48749 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-48749 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1542" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078-380x257.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078-760x514.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48749" class="wp-caption-text">Leon Lederman, Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. His early award-winning research in high energy physics brought him into national science policy circles. In 1963, he proposed the idea that became the National Accelerator Laboratory. In 1977, Lederman led the team that discovered the bottom quark at Fermilab. The following year, Lederman was named director, and his administration brought Fermilab into its position of scientific prominence with the achievement of the world’s most powerful superconducting accelerator, the Tevatron. He served as Fermilab’s director until 1989. (Photo by Kevin Fleming/Corbis via Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>In the early 1960s, Lederman and his colleagues were preoccupied with neutrinos, ghostlike particles that pass through everything in the universe. At the time, only the electron neutrino was known, and the scientists wondered if they could find more types of neutrinos. Columbia’s Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), then the most powerful accelerator in the world, was capable of producing the beam needed to perform the necessary experiments. In 1962, Dr. Lederman, with his colleagues Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, succeeded in identifying the second such particle, the muon neutrino.</p> <figure id="attachment_48746" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48746" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48746 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48746 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1532" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634-380x255.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634-760x511.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48746" class="wp-caption-text">June 24, 1982: Awards Council member and President of Caltech, 1946-1969, Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, presenting the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award at the Banquet ceremonies held in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>The experiment used a beam of the AGS’s energetic protons to produce a shower of pi mesons, which traveled 70 feet toward a 5,000-ton steel wall made of old battleship plates. On the way, they decayed into muons and neutrinos, but only the latter particles could pass through the wall into a neon-filled detector called a spark chamber. There, the impact of neutrinos on aluminum plates produced muon spark trails that could be detected and photographed — proving the existence of muon neutrinos.</p> <figure id="attachment_48754" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48754" style="width: 3000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48754 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48754 lazyload" alt="" width="3000" height="2024" data-sizes="(max-width: 3000px) 100vw, 3000px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057.jpg 3000w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057-380x256.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057-760x513.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48754" class="wp-caption-text">October 19, 1988: Leon Lederman, Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, points to the sign on his office door after being named co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Leon Lederman received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino.” (© AP Photo)</figcaption></figure> <p>The experiment’s use of the first-ever neutrino beam paved the way for scientists to use these particles in research at the AGS and around the world, and eventually netted Lederman and his partners the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since the team’s work, neutrinos have 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.</p> <figure id="attachment_48752" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48752" style="width: 1021px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48752 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48752 lazyload" alt="" width="1021" height="1500" data-sizes="(max-width: 1021px) 100vw, 1021px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle.jpg 1021w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle-259x380.jpg 259w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle-517x760.jpg 517w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48752" class="wp-caption-text">1989: <em>The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?</em> by Leon Lederman with science writer Dick Teresi. Lederman explains why he gave the Higgs boson the nickname “the God Particle.” He wrote, “This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection to another book, a much older one…”</figcaption></figure> <p>This early award-winning research in high energy physics brought Dr. Lederman into national science policy circles, and in 1963, he proposed the idea that eventually became the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.</p> <figure id="attachment_48751" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48751" style="width: 1337px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48751 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48751 lazyload" alt="" width="1337" height="1500" data-sizes="(max-width: 1337px) 100vw, 1337px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos.jpg 1337w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos-339x380.jpg 339w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos-677x760.jpg 677w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48751" class="wp-caption-text">1995: <em>From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery</em> by Leon Lederman and David Schramm. Particle physicists explore the microworld of the atom; cosmologists study the universe on a large scale. This study follows the merger of these fields to define the theory of everything. It describes the development of the current views of the nature of space, time, matter and fundamental forces, and explores what these views reveal about the formation of the universe. The text expands on some of the discoveries of 20th-century science, the explorations of inner space and outer space, and promises they hold for decoding beginnings, endings and the ultimate laws of nature.</figcaption></figure> <p>The design of ever more powerful accelerators, first at Brookhaven National Laboratory, enabled Lederman and his team to find the first antimatter particle in 1965. In 1977, Lederman led the team at Fermilab that discovered the subatomic particle known as the bottom quark. The following year, he was named director of the laboratory. By 1983, his administration had brought Fermilab into a position of international prominence with the construction of the world’s most powerful superconducting accelerator, the Tevatron.</p> <figure id="attachment_50625" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-50625" style="width: 3238px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-50625 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SIDE-BY-SIDE-1999-lederman-with-students-and-award.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-50625 lazyload" alt="" width="3238" height="1163" data-sizes="(max-width: 3238px) 100vw, 3238px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SIDE-BY-SIDE-1999-lederman-with-students-and-award.jpg 3238w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SIDE-BY-SIDE-1999-lederman-with-students-and-award-380x136.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SIDE-BY-SIDE-1999-lederman-with-students-and-award-760x273.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SIDE-BY-SIDE-1999-lederman-with-students-and-award.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-50625" class="wp-caption-text">1999: (Left) Leon Lederman with delegates at the American Academy of Achievement’s Inaugural International Achievement Summit in Budapest, Hungary. (Right) Awards Council member Leon Lederman presents the Golden Plate Award to Dr. Georges Charpak, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, at a luncheon ceremony in Budapest.</figcaption></figure> <p>A convinced proponent of science education, Lederman opened Fermilab to countries not previously associated with high energy physics. During his term as director, Lederman also emphasized the importance of math and science education as outreach to neighboring communities. He initiated the Saturday Morning Physics lectures and subsequently founded the Friends of Fermilab.</p> <figure id="attachment_50910" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-50910" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-50910 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-50910 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1531" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio-380x255.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio-760x510.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-50910" class="wp-caption-text">Dr. Marvin Minsky, pioneer of artificial intelligence, and Dr. Leon Lederman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, in a conversation between the symposiums at the 2001 American Academy of Achievement in San Antonio, Texas.</figcaption></figure> <p>The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Lederman and his partners, Schwartz and Steinberger, for “transforming the ghostly neutrino into an active tool of research.” Lederman used his share of the prize money to buy a vacation cabin in Idaho. In 1989, Dr. Lederman stepped down as director of Fermilab and assumed the title director emeritus. He then served as Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago and pursued his increasing interest in the problems of science education in American schools. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, the first state-wide residence public school for gifted children, and the Teacher’s Academy of Mathematics and Science in Chicago.</p> <figure id="attachment_48758" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48758" style="width: 2954px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48758 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48758 lazyload" alt="" width="2954" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2954px) 100vw, 2954px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214.jpg 2954w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214-374x380.jpg 374w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214-748x760.jpg 748w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48758" class="wp-caption-text">February 27, 2002: Dr. Leon M. Lederman moving the hands of the <em>Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists</em>‘ “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight at University of Chicago. The hands of the Doomsday Clock, for 55 years a symbol of nuclear danger, were moved two minutes closer to midnight, reflecting the possibility of terrorism, relations between India and Pakistan, and other threats. The symbolic clock had been set at 11:51 since 1998.</figcaption></figure> <p>Dr. Lederman was Pritzker Professor of Physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards besides the Nobel, including the National Medal of Science (1965), the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1976), and the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982). He is a past chairman and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1993, he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize by President Clinton. He has served as founding member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel and the International Committee for Future Accelerators.</p> <figure id="attachment_48770" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48770" style="width: 2595px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48770 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48770 lazyload" alt="" width="2595" height="2610" data-sizes="(max-width: 2595px) 100vw, 2595px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107.jpg 2595w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107-378x380.jpg 378w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107-756x760.jpg 756w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48770" class="wp-caption-text">2008: A shot of Leon Lederman in front of a chalkboard for an essay he wrote for the September 15, 2008 issue of <em>Newsweek</em>, “What We’ll Find Inside the Atom.” During his term as director of Fermilab, Lederman emphasized the importance of math and science education as outreach to the neighboring communities. He then initiated the Saturday Morning Physics lectures and subsequently founded the Friends of Fermilab, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and the Teacher’s Academy for Mathematics and Science. (© Michael L. Abramson/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 1994, researchers at Fermilab achieved an old goal of Dr. Lederman’s, detecting the top quark, the bottom quark’s elusive companion, which had escaped observation for the previous 17 years.</p> <p>Leon Lederman’s publication list runs to 200 papers. He is co-author of the books <em>The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?</em> (1989, with Dick Teresi), <em>From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery </em>(1995, with David N. Schramm), <em>Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe</em> (2004) and <em>Quantum Physics for Poets</em> (2011), both co-authored by Christopher T. Hill. In these works, Lederman used humor, metaphor, and storytelling to delve into the mysteries of matter, discussing particle accelerators and the elusive “God particle.”</p> <figure id="attachment_48765" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48765" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48765 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48765 lazyload" alt="" width="1024" height="1539" data-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen.jpg 1024w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen-506x760.jpg 506w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48765" class="wp-caption-text">2012: Leon Lederman and his wife, Ellen, in Batavia, Illinois, days before his last day at Fermilab. (© Reidar Hahn)</figcaption></figure> <p>Lederman retired permanently from Fermilab in 2012. That same year, researchers at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), deploying the Large Hadron Collider, detected a particle resembling the theoretical description of the Higgs boson — Lederman’s “God Particle.” Subsequent research has continued to verify the match of this particle with the theoretical model, and the mystery particle is continuing to behave as described in the Standard Model of physics, and as predicted by Leon Lederman.</p> <p>In 2015, at age 92, Leon Lederman and his wife, Ellen, auctioned off his Nobel medal, raising $765,000 to finance his long-term care. The Ledermans spend most of his remaining years at their home in Idaho, where the great physicist enjoyed the company of his horses, cats, and dogs. Leon Lederman died at the age of 96.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1982 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.nuclear-physicist">Nuclear Physicist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.physicist">Physicist</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.theoretical-physicist">Theoretical Physicist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> July 15, 1922 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> October 3, 2018 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p>“I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn’t doing anything else, and I didn’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good.”</p> <p>Leon Lederman’s modesty belied the scale of his achievements. In his lifetime, he was recognized as the world’s foremost experimental physicist, one of the very small group of scientists who have revolutionized our understanding of the subatomic world.</p> <p>In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he participated in the discovery of the K-meson particle and the non-conservation of parity during muon decay. In 1962, with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, he designed and performed an experiment that proved the existence of the muon neutrino, an effort that eventually earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. He led the efforts that found the first anti-matter particle in 1965 and the bottom quark in 1977. As director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, he laid the groundwork for the discovery of the mysterious top quark. After stepping down as director, he continued to write and teach, and campaigned vigorously to improve science education in the United States.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/dg7tjjneJ7E?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_11_52_02.Still016-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_11_52_02.Still016-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Subatomic World Explorer</h2> <div class="sans-2">Las Vegas, Nevada</div> <div class="sans-2">June 27, 1992</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Speaking to someone who knows nothing about physics, what turns you on about it?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: First of all, let me say that beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. People are turned on by many things in science, or in humanities, or any serious study. As an early graduate student, when it’s the time to choose your field of research, you make an important decision. I was committed to physics, but physics has many subfields.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/LI1rFuKn30E?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_27_19_13.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_27_19_13.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I had spent three years in the Army, and the first year in graduate school’s a tough one because I had forgotten how to study, and I wasn’t doing that well, and the classes were very crowded. The professors were just getting back from their own war work and didn’t have much time for counseling. And so I was sort of at loose ends and depressed, and my coursework was poor. And I went around looking for my old college friends — who were either in graduate school or already had graduated — to get support, and they supported me. I remember trying to — several of them were clustered up at MIT, and they said, “Why don’t you transfer here, and we’ll help you?” So I tried to, but my early grades were so bad I couldn’t get into MIT. People at MIT are a little embarrassed about that now.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>Then I had to make a decision. Which subfield to go into? There was nuclear physics. There was what’s called physics of materials. There was atomic physics, where you studied atoms. The guy who invented the laser was one of the professors at Columbia, and he was working on fields that had to do with that kind of research, which was exciting. There were so many fields, it was like being a kid with his nose pressed against the glass of a candy store, looking at all these candies and saying, “What’s fun?”</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/A3l5fZ2Jy7g?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_41_01_13.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_41_01_13.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>One of the fields was a brand-new field, which had to do with what you would call an atom smasher and we’d call a particle accelerator. Columbia University was building a large atom smasher off-campus. But they were building one which, when it was in operation back in 1951, was the largest atom smasher in the world, for a short time, before somebody else built a bigger one. That field was brand new to Columbia. I was intrigued by that, that I’d be almost as up on the field as the professors who had determined to bring that subject to Columbia but were not experts. That was exciting because it was a new field.</p> <p>It was a totally new field. It had to do with “what’s inside.” That’s the title of it: “What’s Inside.” We know that if you take a small piece of chalk or any material and you start cutting it, you cut it into smaller and smaller pieces. If you keep cutting it and pretend that you can keep on doing this, eventually you get down to something which we call a molecule. This might be a molecule of some kind. Then we notice that a molecule is made of atoms, which are even smaller. It’s kind of a zooming down.</p> <p>Now you’re getting into sizes which the human eye can’t see. So you go molecule, you go atom — and then inside the atom, it turns out that the atom itself is made of nuclei and electrons around it. That part of the field was well known. We were continuing that field into the nucleus of the atom. So you go zooming down, down, into even smaller dimensions. Like, if this whole room were an atom, then in the middle of the room, there’s a grain of dandruff. That’s the nucleus. You zoom down to the grain of dandruff, you look at it, and you say, “What’s inside?” So it was the added business of search, of trying to understand the basic building blocks, which to me was the turn-on.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_48804" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48804" style="width: 1926px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48804 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48804 lazyload" alt="" width="1926" height="2922" data-sizes="(max-width: 1926px) 100vw, 1926px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448.jpg 1926w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448-250x380.jpg 250w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448-501x760.jpg 501w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48804" class="wp-caption-text">October 1988: Physicist Leon M. Lederman, after learning he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger for their neutrino beam method and the discoveries made using it. The experiment was planned when the three researchers were associated with Columbia University in New York and carried out using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at Brookhaven National Accelerator Laboratory on Long Island, New York. The year they were awarded the prize, Leon Lederman was director of the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, near Chicago, Illinois, where the world’s largest proton accelerator is situated. Melvin Schwartz, formerly a professor at Columbia and Stanford Universities, was president of his own firm, specializing in computer communications, in Mountain View, California. Jack Steinberger, an American citizen, worked as a senior physicist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where he had led a number of large experiments in elementary particle physics, including experiments that employ neutrino beams. (Photo courtesy of Michael L. Abramson/The LIFE Images Collection and Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>You eventually came down to what you yourself have described as “just barely a fact.”</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: That’s a particle that I have a great deal of affection for. That’s an answer to a question that goes, “How come you won the Nobel Prize, and what did you win it for?”</p> <p><strong>Here we go. What is a neutrino, and why did you win the Nobel Prize for discovering one?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: We don’t have a blackboard here, and without a blackboard, a professor like me feels totally insecure. I don’t even have a little piece of blanket I can hold against my cheek under these circumstances. But let’s go anyway. What the heck!</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/s7jhFDU1Bnw?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_44_06_12.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_44_06_12.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>We learned about what’s inside. Inside the nucleus, there are protons and neutrons, two of the constituents. Don’t panic; they’re all right. They don’t hurt. We looked inside those, too. But in the course of this kind of study, we found, for example, something called “radioactivity.” You’ve heard about radioactivity. It turns out that radioactivity always involves a mysterious particle which escapes. When you see something radioactive in our research, it’s a kind of explosion. A particle explodes and gives rise to other particles. You study these particles that come off from the explosion, and you reproduce what the event was.</p> <p>Now, there are certain guiding principles in all of this that help us. One of them is the conservation of energy. It says that the total amount of energy should stay the same in any process. Like, if you put 14 people in a room, they can interact with each other, they can yell at each other, scream at each other, but hopefully, at the end of the day, there are still 14 people. The number of people is conserved, in that sense. In the same way, energy — if you keep track of it — it should balance. And in these reactions, it didn’t balance. Something was missing.</p> <p>For a while, physicists jumped out of second-story windows. They got very upset because they really loved conservation of energy, and it looked as if they were going to lose it as a principle. Until somebody said, “Maybe there’s a particle escaping. Let’s assume it is, and since it doesn’t show up in our apparatus, it must be electrically neutral, and because it doesn’t show up for other reasons, it must be very small. So they used the diminutive ending “ino,” which is Italian for “little, little guy.” So a neutral, little particle.</p> <p>And because of other properties, It became a very mysterious particle head. It was like, “Little fly upon the wall, ain’t you got no…” Anyway, I’m not going to finish that. But the neutrino had no electric charge. it turned out that its mass was almost zero, if not zero. Even today, in 1992, we think the neutrino may have zero mass, or if it has any mass, it’s a teensy, weensy amount of mass, not much. Lots of particles are detected because they make collisions. A proton hitting into some piece of lead, three inches thick, will never get through the lead because it will hit something, some other nucleus, and be stopped. Neutrinos didn’t have this strong ability to collide, so it didn’t seem to have any forces. So here it is, almost not even a thing. It had no charge, no mass, no strong force, and yet, we knew it was robbing energy from reactions, and it was very important. As we got to know more and more about it, it became crucial.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/JmsudG4m2UA?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.01_03_02_04.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.01_03_02_04.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>For example, why does the sun keep shining? The sun has been around for four billion years, and there was no mechanism which would keep it shining unless neutrinos were involved. So, whereas it became harder and harder to come to grips with the reality of neutrinos, conceptually, it kept taking an increasing, important role in our understanding of important processes like the sun shining, like radioactivity. In the late 1950s, the neutrino was becoming an increasingly irritating concept, which we had to come to grips with. It was confusing us. There was data that was contradictory; it didn’t make any sense. There were reactions that should have taken place but didn’t take place. That’s when a group of us at Columbia came on the idea that we should actually see, try to detect, neutrino collisions.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/tA8eld2Dn_0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_21_48_06.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_21_48_06.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Now that’s a hard job because, if you try to calculate, using the best information we had, how much material — let’s say steel. How thick a steel wall do you need if a given neutrino coming into the steel wall should have a very good chance of never getting out? How long does that steel wall have to be? Ten feet, a hundred feet, a mile, ten miles? Turned out the answer is a hundred million miles. So we went to the authorities, and we said, “We need a hundred million miles of steel. We want to catch neutrinos.” No, of course, we didn’t do that! We thought more clearly, and it turns out, if you have two neutrinos, you only need half that thickness. And if you have a billion neutrinos — or a billion, billion neutrinos — then you might need a kind of detector that you could think of building. It would still have to be very massive and detailed. It turned out that we hit on a way of doing this with a detector, which, for that time, the 1960s, was very massive. It was ten tons of material, and it’s not just ten stupid tons of steel sitting there. You had to look inside to see the collision. So it had to be, in some sense, semi-transparent.</p> <p>Anyway, the experiment was wildly successful. We discovered, in fact, that they weren’t one neutrino, but there were two kinds of neutrinos, and that’s what was giving us all the confusion. The number of neutrinos was doubled. And that, these two types of neutrinos, really set us on a road towards what we now call the “Standard Model,” a compact summary of all of this data that I’ve been telling you about — the data — lots of data that came out in the laboratories all over the world since 1960. So it became known as the “two-neutrino experiment.” Of course, when you tell somebody who’s not a scientist about two neutrinos, they say it sounds like an Italian dance team. “Ladies and gentlemen, we now have the Two Neutrinos!”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>That’s the story, and eventually, it came to the attention of the King of Sweden, and we were invited to a great party in Stockholm.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_48826" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48826" style="width: 1632px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48826 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48826 lazyload" alt="" width="1632" height="2000" data-sizes="(max-width: 1632px) 100vw, 1632px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592.jpg 1632w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592-310x380.jpg 310w, /web/20200917235230im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592-620x760.jpg 620w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48826" class="wp-caption-text">December 6, 1995: Leon M. Lederman leaves the atomic bomb monument, behind him, at Hiroshima Peace Park, a memorial park in the center of Hiroshima, Japan dedicated to the legacy of Hiroshima, as the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear attack, and to the memories of the bomb’s direct and indirect victims. Lederman attended the Future of Hope Conference sponsored by the Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and the Asahi Shimbun. Seen in the far background is the A-Bomb Dome, from the world’s first atomic raid on Hiroshima. Leon Lederman has co-chaired the <em>Bulletin of Atomic Scientists</em>‘ Board of Sponsors since 2009. The members of the <em>Bulletin</em>’s Board of Sponsors are recruited by their peers from among the world’s most accomplished scientific leaders to amplify the gravity and importance of what the <em>Bulletin</em> publishes, and to provide expert counsel on issues of global security, science, and survival, particularly for the organization’s annual Doomsday Clock statement. The BAS Board was founded in 1948 by Albert Einstein and its first chair was J. Robert Oppenheimer; it currently includes 16 Nobel Laureates. Lederman was elected chair emeritus in 2015, the first time the <em>Bulletin</em> has bestowed such an honor.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>When you won the Nobel Prize, was that a surprise? Where were you? How did you react?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Because of the time change, you’re generally notified about this at five or six in the morning. They assume they’ll be forgiven for waking you. Was it a surprise? Not exactly. It’s always a surprise, but I knew I had been nominated. My kids used to tease me whenever the physics Nobel Prizes were announced and I wasn’t included. They would say “Uh huh, another year in which you didn’t win it.” And I would say, “ I’ve done so many things, they can’t decide what to give it to me for.” That was my standard joke. So I was relaxed. I didn’t worry too much about it because I was a senior, full professor; I’d gotten lots of awards and recognition. It would be a little icing on the cake. It’d be nice, but I didn’t think too much of it.</p> <p>Then you get this call at six in the morning. My wife picked up the phone and said “Yes, yes, yes, he’s here,” and handed me the phone and muttered something which I won’t repeat because she knew our life would change, at least for a while. It was a gentleman in Sweden notifying me about this award. And you laugh. As soon as I hung up, we started laughing. It was a great, great emotion. About eight minutes later, it got on the wires, and we started getting calls. About a half-hour later, the first friends arrived for champagne. So it was a little party, but it changes your life more than I would have expected.</p> <p><strong>How so?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/FZDLjOmY5fA?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_21_44_04.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_21_44_04.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Leon Lederman: What I didn’t expect was the awe with which people treat this thing. You know, I thought it’s another prize, great. I’d like to have it, and there’s even a check that goes with it. Wow! That’s great. A nice party you go to — almost all expenses paid except for my wife’s dresses. But it’s more than that. It really has an aura about it. First of all, you become an expert on everything. You get interviewed for, “What do you think about the Brazilian debt, or social security, or women’s dresses?” Well, there I had an opinion — but the other things, I don’t know — as short as possible! And that’s part of it — and that, you’d better be careful about. But it turned out that if you ever want to do anything in the way of education, for example, or science policy, where you want to change laws or move people to be active — boy, then having a Nobel Prize helps a lot! You get into places that normally would be very difficult to get into.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You’ve spoken a lot in your writings about the joy of discovery. </strong><strong style="font-size: 1rem;"> What does it feel like? </strong><strong style="font-size: 1rem;">Can you recall some occasions when you knew you had something?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/u9NT2fM9x8I?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_37_40_08.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_37_40_08.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Leon Lederman: Almost all of them seem to happen at three o’clock in the morning, mostly on Thursdays. I don’t know. There is that occasion when you realize that you’re learning something that nobody else knows. It may be you’re alone. It may be you’re with a graduate student. It may be you’re with a colleague. Sometimes it’s very gradual. The data accumulates slowly, and there’s not what we would call the “eureka” instant. But sometimes it does happen that way. I can remember several examples of suddenly realizing that the world is very different from the way the four billion people or so that are on the planet know about it.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Can you give us an example?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Here’s an example. Once upon a time, we were studying a particular symmetry. Symmetry is very important. Simplicity is a key sort of force, forcing our intuition.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/JF5yMPN-gW0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_04_40_06.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_04_40_06.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>We really do have a fundamental belief that the world is very simple — that when we finally understand the universe, we’ll be able to fit it on a simple T-shirt with one sort of symbol and an explanation point: “This is the way the world works!” We’re not there yet. And one of the ingredients in simplicity is symmetry, and symmetry means what most artists know about and most people who appreciate Greek sculpture know about — it’s something which looks the same. You see a row of Greek columns, and you see that symmetry of the columns. Or you see a perfect Grecian figure, which is again, symmetric between the left and the right side. And we were testing one of these deep symmetry principles, which everyone believed was perfect. It’s like, if you have a perfect human being who’s perfectly symmetric, and half the person shows up, like one of these magic boxes you sometimes see, say, from just right down the middle. You see the left side, and you say, “I can deduce what’s behind the screen, even though I don’t see it.” By looking at the left side, I know what the right side looks like. So you can make predictions about nature from your belief in symmetry.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>We were testing this idea. And we had an idea, which we got on a Friday evening, for how to test it. And it turned out that some of the apparatus that we needed was already there on the floor of the accelerator, being polished by a graduate student who was going to use this particular apparatus to do his thesis.</p> <p><strong>Where was this?</strong></p> <p>This was at Columbia University, at this new atom smasher, which by that time was well-honed and well-used. We got the idea, actually, during a Chinese lunch in the city. The physics department at Columbia has Chinese lunches and lots of animated conversation between slurps of winter melon soup and hoisin and all the good northern Chinese food we like to eat there.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235230if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/D7ImjzyC_tU?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_08_40_24.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lederman-Leon-MasterEdit.00_08_40_24.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Suddenly it became clear that there was a way of testing this parity idea. And so, we went to the laboratory and dashed in on this poor, confused steward and started rearranging the apparatus and telling him, “Do this, do that, do the other thing,” and he saw his thesis flying out the window. “What are you doing to my apparatus?” And someone said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be great.” And we worked on the weekend, preparing this experiment. And it turned out that we started collecting data Monday evening, and by three o’clock Tuesday morning, we knew something that nobody else in the world knew: that this symmetry idea that we had been working on was not a perfect symmetry, that there was an imperfection in the symmetry, a very important imperfection in the symmetry. That was the key discovery. That’s the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat; you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it’s fear. Is it right? And it’s incredible humor. “How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid not to see this?” The next thing is, “When can I tell people?” and “Who do I want to call first?” Now, all these things jumble in on you in a great feeling of tremendous excitement. Of course, many scientists say, “I do science because I’m curious.” That’s not enough because if you were satisfying your own curiosity and you couldn’t tell anybody how clever you are to find it out, it would be useless. So you’ve got to communicate. All of this piles in, in this moment of discovery.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Was physics your first love or did you sort of stumble onto it? </strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: I think the interest was there from the beginning, and then I came back to it later. I didn’t know it was physics at first. When I was a kid, it was science; it was very romantic activities. I read newspaper articles about scientists. It turned out to be physics, in retrospect. I didn’t know it at the time; I couldn’t spell it. I read a book by Einstein, for kids. He wrote it for kids. It was called <em>The Meaning of Relativity</em>. Wonderful book. He compared science with a detective story, where you have clues, and the scientist, as detective, trying to put things together. False clues, you got to check up on them, make sure they’re right. That was a big impression. Through high school influences, I was attracted to chemistry. So I went to college and majored in chemistry and then went back to physics in graduate school.</p> <p><strong>What did your parents do?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: My father was a storekeeper, and my mother raised the kids. They were first-generation immigrants in New York.</p> <p><strong>Where did they come from?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: They both came from the former Union, before it was the Soviet Union. They emigrated separately and met here when they were a bit older — kind of a standard story for a New Yorker.</p> <p><strong>Were they able to get a college education?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: They never had the chance. My mother was sent here by her family because things were very dangerous where they lived at the time. She was only twelve years old and had a tag around her neck with the address of someone in New York who expected her. She worked as soon as she could but really never had an education. My father was politically active and was one jump ahead of the tsar’s police. He escaped, came here, and immediately had to make a living. One of the wonderful things about the family was that, traditionally, learning was revered. Even though they didn’t have it, they wanted their kids to have it.</p> <p><strong>Did they live to see some of your achievements?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Yes, they did. Not the Nobel Prize, unfortunately, but I was a professor; I was successful. I was winning so many medals, it took me a half-hour to transfer them from my jacket to my pajamas every night and back again in the morning. They lived to see that.</p> <p><strong>They were supportive of your career, I gather?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Oh, yeah. They were ecstatic. They didn’t quite expect my career choice I made. My mother’s ambition for me was to be a successful dentist. Maybe she had a point, come to think of it.</p> <p><strong>Were there any scientists in the family?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: No. I was the first in my family to go to college. I had an older brother who was a very big influence on me, but he never finished high school. He had magic hands, rigged up a laboratory in the basement, and he let me help him. I would do all the chores he was supposed to do if he would let me watch him do his experiments.</p> <p><strong>What was he like?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: He was a little wild, I think. That’s probably why he never finished high school, but he was a terrific influence for me. He liked to do experiments. He would collect all kinds of equipment — electricity, chemicals from the drug store. Occasionally, somehow he’d get hold of a chemistry set, and we had a flash of opulence. And he loved to do things, and he’d make things work, and I loved to watch him. And I think that was a strong influence on me. It sort of introduced me to things and how they work, and that was impressive. So I think that he probably disposed me toward chemistry, and in high school, the chemistry teachers were more fun. So there I was a chemist.</p> <p><strong>Why did that change?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: In college, I majored in chemistry, but I also took a lot of physics courses. Then I won the war, one of those wars, I forget which one. I spent three years in the Army, thinking about what I’d do when I finished and went to graduate school. When I finished military service, I decided physics was more fun. Why? Because the kids who were in physics happened to be more fun than the kids I met in chemistry. So when I got out of the Army, I applied to graduate schools in physics.</p> <p><strong>What person do you think most inspired you, growing up? You mentioned your brother. Were there teachers, or any other people?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: There were a number of them. I don’t think I could single one out. One of the guys that influenced me most in high school was a young student who was sending himself through college in the evenings, and he worked as a laboratory assistant in the high school. He taught us how to blow glass. We got very friendly with him, and I learned a little about chemistry techniques. He was a chemistry major in college, and to us, he was a real intellectual. He was the first person I met who was really intent on becoming a professional scientist. That’s one example. In college, there were a number of role models around. They weren’t people I really got to know. I read about them in the papers.</p> <p>I remember reading about a famous physicist, Carl Anderson, who won the Nobel Prize in the ‘30s for discovering the positive electron. I remember a very romantic scene in the newspaper. He had to drag some apparatus up to the top of a mountain and, using the cosmic rays as a source of particles, he discovered this positive electron. To me, that whole idea of going up to the top of the mountain to trap a particle was romantic, exciting, and added to this whole mystique.</p> <p>I was a graduate student at Columbia University, which was one of the greatest departments ever in the ‘40s and ‘50s and ‘60s. There were great professors there, like I. I. Rabi, one of the key founders of modern American physics. Before World War II, most Americans had to go to Europe if they wanted a good education in physics. He went to Europe and came back, founded a school, in effect, on the East Coast, and his students spread out over the universities of America. The same thing happened with J. Robert Oppenheimer on the West Coast. Between the two of them, they really started American physics.</p> <p><strong>It sounds like you were in the right place at the right time.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Absolutely. During college, there was the Great Depression, and we didn’t worry about getting jobs because there weren’t any jobs. So you just put it aside. Very few of us picked our subject matter because we thought we were going to get jobs. The Depression was so pervasive that we said, “Hey, what are we going to be unemployed in?” “I’m going to be unemployed in history. What are you going to be unemployed in?” “Well, I think I’ll be unemployed in biology.” We really had a free choice because we didn’t worry about what job would give us a big income or had a good retirement plan.</p> <p><strong>What did those professors see in you that made them want to offer you a job?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: I had a sense of humor. I think I was the first graduate student there to start a talk by telling a joke. It’s amazing how few people use that important idea, that you don’t take yourself too seriously, and yet you take the subject seriously. That was my technique. I had a way to see around things. I think humor helps you in that way. What is humor? It’s sort of a shock effect that’s bizarre, a twist to a story that you tell, and that’s the way it is in research.</p> <p>Let’s take a metaphor. You have a trunk and all kinds of combination locks, and you know this trunk is important because you found it in an attic. It’s covered with cobwebs and must be really good. People are working on the combinations, and you come in, sort of six months later, and they’re all working on the combinations, and they have these papers and computer codes, and they’re working out, and you say, “Look at all these bright guys. They haven’t been able to get into the trunk. There’s something they’re missing.” And you walk around the back — the back is open. Nobody went to look at the back of the trunk. Well, it’s kind of a silly metaphor but, in a way, science can often be that way. You know that a lot of very bright people have been working on a problem. You know there’s a solution, right? So you say, “What is it that they haven’t thought about?” It’s that quality of mind that I think I demonstrated as a graduate student. It was a new subject. We were involved in a subject which really was just beginning, and therefore, already, as a graduate student, I was an expert.</p> <p><strong>Could you say in layperson’s terms what happened as a result of that Nobel Prize-winning discovery?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: You can’t take it by itself. You have to say it’s part of a pattern. It’s part of a search for an understanding of how the world really works. Metaphor is useful in this. Suppose Johnny was given an assignment by his teacher: “What makes a library work? What are the common, simplest elements that make up a library?” Let’s take that. A library is a complex thing. My metaphor would be — just to warn you ahead of time — “The library is like the universe.” So Johnny goes says, “What a nuisance.” He goes to the library and says, “It’s obvious. A library is made of books. Books make a library.” But then he remembers the teacher said, “What are the simplest ingredients?” He sees a lot of books: fat books, skinny books, tall books, short books, profound books, stupid books. The library has all the books. So he says, “It must be something simpler than books.” And he looks inside books. Books are made of chapters, chapters are made of paragraphs, paragraphs are made of sentences — not getting anywhere, really — and then he sees the sentences are made of words. And then he remembers that at the entrance to the library, there’s a big, fat collection of words. Presumably that collection of words — which is called a dictionary — if you put those words together in different ways, you make all the books. You need a set of rules, right? What are the rules by which you put the words together? Let’s call the rules “grammar.” So with that dictionary and the rules, which we call “grammar,” we can make all the books in the library. And then Johnny says, “Now I got it.” Except that he begins to worry because he remembers “simple.” The teacher said it has to be simple, and the dictionary book with all the words is very thick, right? This is a real big, well-to-do library. So he says, “What else is there? Ah, I got it! Every one of those words is made up of only 26 letters. So if I have 26 letters and a new set of rules — we’ll call those rules ‘spelling’ — my 26 letters and spelling will make all the words in the dictionary, and all the words in the dictionary will make all the books in the library.”</p> <p>So he’s very happy. He goes home and starts writing it up when his baby sister comes and says, “What’re you doing?” He doesn’t want to be annoyed, but he knows he’s going to get punished if he doesn’t treat his sister with a certain amount of respect, so he explains the assignment. And he says, “Look, it’s 26 letters. Just imagine how simple it is. Twenty-six letters, spelling and grammar make all the books in the library.” And she says, “You’re stupid.” And now he’s nervous because, when she says that, he knows there’s something. She’s very bright. He says, “What do you mean?” She says, “All you need is a zero and a one.” He realized, of course. Why shall the child show us? Children these days grow up with digital toys in their cribs, and they know about zeros and ones before the older people.</p> <p>For grown-ups who don’t know about zeros and ones, you can use Morse code, which is a dot and a dash. But a zero and a one, or a dot and a dash, with a new rule — maybe Morse code or a computer algorithm — and you can make all 26 letters. So now the story is: The library universe can be explained by just two things, a zero and a one, put together by a certain set of rules which make the letters, which make the words, which make the sentences, and the paragraphs, and the books in the library. So the neutrino turns out to be, we think, one of those ingredients. It turns out, we can’t get away with only two. Oh, to end the story, if the zero and the one can’t be taken apart — so far, we’ve taken everything apart, the books into chapters and paragraphs and words and letters, and now we have a zero and a one. If the zero and the one can’t be taken apart, you’ve got the bottom line. You’ve got the primordial building blocks of the library.</p> <p>The question is, “What works for the universe?” And it turns out there are certain basic particles. We now believe that, by a consensus, which doesn’t mean it’s right. It just means that it’s our current belief that we’ve gotten the zeros and the ones for the universe in which we live, and the neutrino is one of those crucial particles. So that’s the significance. It doesn’t help us cure the common cold. It doesn’t help us gain economic advantage over our competitors. It’s pure knowledge. It’s understanding the universe in which we live, a subject which really started science. It was when the ancients looked up at the sky, and saw the seasons, and looked at the variety of materials — air, water, fire, earth, and so on — and they said, “This is all very complicated.” And then they said, “There must be something simple behind it all.” It’s that old, Greek notion of simplicity that has developed the subject of science. We’ve been on that road, from that early 2,500-year-ago idea to the present time, in learning how the universe works. You say, “It’s expensive,” and it is expensive. The counter-argument is that, in the course of following that road, we changed the way people live because we invented all kinds of things. Mechanics and electricity and lasers, and all the things that fuel modern society came out of that quest for how the library works.</p> <p><strong>A writer in </strong><em><strong>Scientific American</strong></em><strong> brought up a very interesting practical ramification in relation to your work. He asks, “Do neutrinos have mass? If they do, could the gravitational attraction of myriad neutrinos keep the universe from expanding forever and becoming a cold, dark void?” That would be nice.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Yes. Neutrinos may have an interesting role to play in the greater scheme of things. But again, to answer that question for the kid who’s curious, you have to say, “Why? What has this got to do with the universe?” And in fact, it has a lot to do with the universe. It turns out, if we want to understand the universe, which means the stars and the galaxies, and all the great big things, we have to know the small things. That’s what we call “the inner space-outer space connection.” We have to know about the small things in order to understand how the big things work.</p> <p>That particular example is a very fascinating one. We know that the universe is expanding as if there were an explosion roughly 15 billion years ago. It’s called the Big Bang. In that explosion, all the matter in the universe spewed out, and space and time radiated — got bigger and bigger and bigger. Now the question is: Will this continue forever? Or will it slow down because gravity is an attractive force? Gravity says, “Come back, come back!” How strong is gravity compared to the initial explosive force? That’s an issue. That depends. It’s an experimental issue. We can find this out. It depends on how much mass there is — the more mass, the more gravity. If we add up all the mass, count all the stars we can see with the most powerful telescopes, we estimate how much mass they have, we can calculate whether we have enough mass to slow up the expansion. When we do, we find we don’t have nearly enough mass.</p> <p>But on the other hand, there are the neutrinos. We know they’re there because we know enough about the big explosion to know that it spewed an enormous number of neutrinos around. The neutrinos themselves would have no impact on the expansion if they have zero mass. On the other hand, if it’s not zero, but teensy-weensy — but not zero, just a small amount — then the neutrinos might act to break the expansion, slow it down. So the issue then, after we discovered the neutrino, was to see whether, in fact — since the 1960s, we now know that in the universe, in nature, there are three neutrinos. Part of the zeros and ones is there are three different kinds of neutrinos. We don’t know very much about the masses. If they have a small mass, they can act to change the future of the universe. Those are experiments one can do.</p> <p><strong>You’ve devoted a lot of your energy and time in recent years to teaching, and to teaching teachers. Why is that important to you?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Teaching has always been important to me. I grew up at — as I mentioned — at Columbia University, which happened to be a university — and especially a physics department — dedicated to doing a good job in teaching. And so we had that tradition. We were teachers; we taught. Sometimes, if you were very busy in a laboratory, you could get off a semester, but then you’d have to teach twice as much the next semester. And we didn’t object to that. We liked that idea, and I was trained with that. And you’re always teaching. You’re teaching graduate students in combat, and you’re learning from them. Teaching is always a teaching/learning process. If you don’t learn when you’re teaching, then you’re not doing it right. So teaching was a big thing for me from the beginning.</p> <p>When I left Columbia to become an administrator of a large laboratory, I started suffering withdrawal symptoms. You know, twitching, and saying, “Gee, I’ve got to teach something.” And so I started bringing in high school kids to teach them things. And then I learned that they were, themselves, very frustrated because high school teachers often couldn’t handle bright kids. Little by little, one thing led to another, and I got into looking at the whole educational structure. And so I did a lot of work with gifted kids, on the one hand, out in the boonies of the state of Illinois, and then I moved to Chicago about four years ago and began to be interested in what we could do about a public school system in a large city; in other words, an urban school system.</p> <p>Everybody knows, these days, that the American educational system is in bad shape. Our system for educating kids over the last 20 years has declined dangerously. Our kids are not learning, and they’re certainly not learning math and science. The net result is: the number of kids who are going into math and science is declining. If not for foreigners, we’d be in bad shape in this country, you know, in the training of engineers, mathematicians, scientists, technicians.</p> <p>There have been a lot of studies, hundreds of reports, but very little action. One of the places it hurts the most is in the inner cities. I’m now talking about it from the point of view of the well-being of the nation. I’m not talking about compassion or fairness. Put that aside for a moment; it might move you.</p> <p>We’re not going to have a good time in this country in manning the kind of workforce we need, which is much more technological than ever, if we don’t attract people that have never gone into science, traditionally. And those are minorities, women, handicapped. These are untapped sources of people which we need. We have to desperately do this.</p> <p>So here’s the big city of Chicago, with 400,000 kids, and the number of those who go into science is very small. Why? There are many reasons, and everyone has their own favorite reasons, but what we sw is that the teachers are not trained in math and science. There are exceptions; I’m talking very generally. But especially in the early grades, where teachers have to teach everything, the preparation for math and science is very poor. They’re afraid of math and science, and once they are, the kids catch it right away. So we took it on as a job — some people from the universities — and we enlarged our group to include museum directors, and teachers, and principals, and scientists from the laboratories, and private sector people — all the ingredients of a social system that are interested in education.</p> <p>We formed a team. We formed a not-for-profit academy called the Teachers Academy in Chicago, and we were trying to set up a model for changing all the cities in the United States. I mean my own research is in particle physics, which involves huge accelerators, and we learned from that, that you might as well do it right by doing the whole system. So here we are, in the third largest school system in the nation, Chicago, trying to retrain all the teachers. Not a teacher in one school here, or two schools, or ten schools, or fifty schools, but 600 schools — all the teachers in Chicago — retrain them in ways of teaching math and science that are delightful because it’s a wonderful way to start a kid in being interested in learning.</p> <p>All kids are scientists. They’re born scientists. They ask all these terrible questions that nobody can answer because they’re scientists. So what do you do? You beat that curiosity out of them, and they stop asking questions. It’s very hard to survive that. Our idea was to encourage those questions, redo the way teachers handle kids. New curricula, new ways of talking to kids, new role for a teacher. The fundamental old role of the teacher was as a fount of all knowledge, and if the teacher shows a weakness, that’s terrible. In the new way, the teacher is not a fount of all knowledge, just a facilitator. The teacher talks to the kids and listens to the kids, and tries to find out how Johnny or Mary are thinking. That’s her goal, not “Is it a right answer or wrong answer?” but the method of thinking. We’re learning how to do that, and if we succeed in Chicago, we’ll apply it to 25 other schools, and we’ll all live happily ever after.</p> <p><strong>If you were a recruiter for science classes, how would you try to turn on a kid to study science when they think it’s scary and complex and hard to memorize?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: It depends on the age of the kid. The younger the child, the better off you are. Just let the child be natural. Surround the child with curious things which are fun and instructive — soap bubbles, a little piece of dry ice. If you have a computer, that’s wonderful, because a computer can teach and help you teach. Take them out into the field. Show them living things. These things can be put into a context in which it’s as much play as learning. If you excite them with the joy of learning, they begin to do better in their language courses, and so on. The way we pique their curiosity is by imitating how research is done.</p> <p>For second graders, we do an experiment called the “lifetime of a soap bubble.” So we go into soap bubbles with a little bit of water and detergent, or whatever it is, and we get nice, beautiful bubbles, and we let them play with it and shower their friends. There’s a lot of loose things. Then we give them a stopwatch, and we show them how to start and stop the watch. And then we’re going to measure the lifetime of soap bubbles. The hold the wire hoop; they catch the soap bubble; they start. Then the bubble breaks; they stop. They record the time. And then they’re told to tabulate the data. That’s what a scientist does. So “How many bubbles live between zero and one second, between one and two seconds, between two and three seconds?” So they compile the data. Then they’re told how to graph the data. And they’re interested, you know. So you make a graph of the distribution of the lifetime of soap bubbles. Pretty soon they’re graphing it, and in their beautiful street English, one’s saying to the other — think of this, a second-grader saying, “Which is your independent variable?” They’re getting into what a scientist does and having a wonderful time at it.</p> <p><strong>If you had your druthers, unlimited time, money and energy, what mystery would you most like to crack now?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: It’s what we’re doing. We’d just do it faster. It’s really a megalomaniacal idea that we can understand the universe, but we’re trying to understand. By “understand,” I mean have a mathematical understanding of how it began, how it evolved. After all, we all live in this universe, and that we want to know how we got here and where we’re going. What’s the future of the universe?</p> <p>This is something we’ve been working on for 2,500 years, and even longer if you go back to the mythological origins of science. There, we were dealing with Atlas holding up the world, standing on the back of a turtle. What’s the turtle standing on? Another turtle. From then on, it was turtles all the way down. We know what problems we’re trying to solve. Where’s the top quark? There are six quarks, but we’ve only seen five of them. We’ve measured all five, but there’s a sixth one missing. That’s a detail.</p> <p>The other thing we worry about is tying in the small structures — the zeros and ones, the quarks and leptons — with the beginnings of the universe, before this big expansion during the Big Bang, the mechanisms of the Big Bang, and of course, the deepest question of all: What happened before the Big Bang? What do we mean by space and time? These are the deep questions we’re trying to clarify so that kids will learn them in their second, third, and fourth grade, primitively, at first, then maybe in more detail. This is the road we’re on, and sometimes it takes very complicated kinds of equipment.</p> <p><strong>Did you always feel that you were going to achieve great things?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: No, not at all. I never did. I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids and not be conspicuous. I wasn’t doing anything else, and I didn’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. I was very pleased with the fact that I got a job. But everyone was getting jobs, and I was well aware of that for some reason. I lucked out in the supply/demand business. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good. I have a little twist in my personality, which helped.</p> <p><strong>You’ve described the path of your own career, and it strikes me that luck may have played a part in it. Do you think so?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Oh, without luck, forget it. If you don’t have incandescent good fortune, don’t be a scientist. You need luck because a career in science is full of mistakes, bad judgments, missed opportunities, experiments that failed because the equipment doesn’t work. That’s part of the game. So if you want to be a successful scientist, better make sure you have luck. This may apply to other fields, too, but in science, you depend on many things. You depend on funding. When I was younger, the money rolled in. Society, at that time, was interested in long-term investment. This was the period from the late 1940s to 1970. Then something happened in this country, and we became less interested in our future. People who came of age in the ‘80s were less lucky than we were. That’s one kind of luck, in addition to the luck of the apparatus not breaking in the middle of the experiment or the accelerator working when it should work. All of that requires luck.</p> <p>Of course, horseshoes help. There’s a famous story of a physicist who had a horseshoe over his lab bench, and someone said, “You don’t believe in horseshoes, do you?” And his answer was, “Of course I don’t believe in horseshoes. But I hear it helps, even if you don’t believe in them.”</p> <p><strong>In reading about your discoveries over the years, it becomes clear that you’ve got to be a team player to be a successful physicist. Isn’t that so?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: More and more, I think that’s true. The team idea is still growing. There’s still the option of the lonely scholar in his office at three in the morning who gets an idea. Even as a team player, that can happen because a lot of what you do as a team player, you do alone. But the first thing you want to do when you get an idea is discuss it. You must talk about it. If you have a team, they know exactly what you’re doing. They’re on board right away, rather than this frustrating experience where you say, “Hey, I got this great idea,” and they say, “What are you talking about?”</p> <p>But you’re right that so-called collaborative research is growing in all fields. It’s more prominent in subjects like astronomy or particle physics or oceanography, where you need large shared facilities: an ocean-going vessel that’s fully equipped, or a telescope, or a particle accelerator that costs a few billion dollars. As nature’s secrets become more subtle, the apparatus gets more complicated, and you need more teamwork.</p> <p><strong>Tell us about your work with Charles Townes at Columbia. What was he like?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Charlie was a great guy. Columbia had some wonderful people at that time. It was just after World War II, and Charlie came to Columbia from Bell Labs. He immediately started a very vigorous research program on atomic physics and spectroscopy. Ultimately, he invented the maser and the laser. He was a tremendous, productive guy. At one point, I think he had 16 graduate students working on different problems. He was the guy I was most tempted to join. I took a class with him, and he invited me to do my thesis with him. It was only this new idea and this new accelerator that drew me away from that. Townes was a great teacher and a tremendous active researcher with a lot of energy, and he’s still at it! That’s really impressive.</p> <p><strong>What about Murray Gell-Mann, Mr. Quark?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Murray Gell-Mann? He was an instructor at Columbia. He came through for about a year at that time. He was a delightful guy to talk to. If he’s not the most productive guy of his particular generation, he’s probably the prime candidate. The number of breakthroughs that he made has been a tremendous stimulation to the field. You have to have guys like that. You can’t say he was the best, but he was certainly among the most productive physicists in our field.</p> <p><strong>I gather you have strong feelings about the development of atomic weapons and defense technology. Can you share some of that with us?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: I was not involved in the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb. I was in the Army, and I was working on radar, which is a different subject. The interesting thing is that, after the bomb, in spite of the fact that many scientists did not want to use it, scientists felt a tremendous burden of responsibility to maintain communications with the government and maintain an interest in it.</p> <p>Charlie Townes invited me to join a group of physical scientists who were advising the government on scientific matters. There’s always a problem when you get into high technology and advanced science with an impact on war and peace. I’ll give you an example: Suppose the president of the United States wants to know whether to build some complex airplane. Who can he ask? — The Air Force; they’re experts on airplanes. He can ask the manufacturers; they’re experts on airplanes. Who else can he ask?</p> <p>Physical scientists — or scientists, in general — may not know anything about airplanes, but they have the knack and the training to find out very quickly about the technical issues. So this group advised the government on technical issues, and we were ready to address problems that the president wanted solved. I spent ten years working on that.</p> <p>But I think we’re in a different period now. Fundamentally, the scene was set by President Eisenhower in his famous retiring address. Eisenhower warned us about what he called the “military-industrial complex,” where huge sums of money have created an entity which wants to continue spending huge sums of money. I think that’s what we have to be concerned about as we face a future with totally changed circumstances.</p> <p>We see the former Soviet Union demolished in many ways. There are still lots of dangers ahead of us, problems of terrorism, of Husseins and Gaddafis that we have to be concerned about. We still haven’t dismantled a huge number of weapons. Still, the threat has changed dramatically, but our military budget hasn’t changed at all. Imperceptibly. That’s a problem Americans have to face in view of all the different needs for education, for science, for rehabilitating a crumbling infrastructure. We’ve got problems.</p> <p><strong>I’m sure that all these discoveries you made weren’t as smooth as they look on paper. Obviously, many, many hours went into it. How do you deal with setbacks? Do you ever have doubts or fear of failure?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: When you have setbacks, you cry; you saw on your wrists with a butter knife or something, so it doesn’t do permanent damage. Yeah, you get depressed, and you work at it because what else can you do? I think that’s probably true. You can get discouraged. They have a lot of discouragement in this. You know, more often than not, things don’t work. It’s the ordinariness of nature and equipment, and so on, that things don’t work. So you get too used to that pretty soon, and you know that sooner or later something may work.</p> <p>You’ve got to be hopeful and optimistic. Often, I remember sitting on the floor of an accelerator with a graduate student, looking at each other accusingly, and he would say, “You’re the professor, you get it working.” I’d say, “You’re the graduate student. It’s your thesis; you get it working.” And then, somehow, by five a.m. or so, between us, we’d find out why it wasn’t working. It wasn’t plugged in or something even more significant than that. So we got it working.</p> <p>There’s always a measure of compromise between failure and occasional success. But when the success comes, it can be terrific. It doesn’t always have to be a great discovery; it can be getting some apparatus to work well. I used to have an Italian professor, a wonderful guy who never lost his sense of wonder. He’d come into a room and turn on the toggle switch, and the lights would go on, and then he’d turn it off and turn it on again and say “Ah, <em>splendido</em>! Look at that!” He turns the switch, and a lot of lights go on. It’s wonderful that that can happen, somehow, by miracles.</p> <p><strong>Is there anything that you haven’t done, career-wise or even hobby-wise, that you really have yearned to do? I understand music does a lot for you.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: I started taking piano lessons some years ago for the first time. There’s a whole literature of “music for the older beginner.” My music teacher was very enthusiastic. She said, “You must love music to take up piano at your age.” And I said, “You don’t understand. I want to make money!” I had fun. After, sort of, six or eight months, I was really playing stupid little pieces and enjoying them. But it took time, and now I want to write books. I wrote one book that was published. It was on the worst-sellers’ list for 27 weeks, and I have another book coming out in late fall, which I think is going to be a real funny book. I always wanted to be a standup comic. I didn’t have the talent to do that, but among physicists, I’m great because none of them can tell jokes.</p> <p><strong>You get to practice on your students all the time.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Oh, yeah. In the student course card, they say, “Watch out for his corny jokes, they’re awful.” I think it’s okay. It keeps them awake. What am I going to tell them next? “Hey, Red, wake up that kid sleeping next to you.” And Red says, “Why should I? You put him to sleep.”</p> <p><strong>What advice would you give to a young kid right now wanting to emulate you, going into science as a career?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: I love science, and I think the hardest thing for young people is to know what they want. It takes effort to really know what you want. You want an extra income? If you’re really interested in becoming wealthy, then you don’t want to go into science. It’s not impossible but unlikely that that’s a road to wealth. You really have to know what makes you happy, and that takes a little effort. What makes you pleasurable? What makes you say, “Thank God it’s Monday” instead of “Thank God it’s Friday”? That’s a lot. You’re going to spend some vast fraction of your life in your business, whatever it is, whether it’s running a lathe, running a corporation, or running an experiment. Therefore, you want to really enjoy that. Otherwise, it’s a dumb thing you’re going to do. If you hate to go to work, even though you’re making three times as much as a scientist, probably your life will not be that satisfying. The biggest effort is, know thyself. That’s Shakespeare, right? “To thine own self be true.” It’s not easy, so you’ve got to have some experiences. I generally advise kids to, you know, take the hardest courses because that’s useful. Aim high because you can always fall back, but if you aim low, there’s nothing to fall back to. You know? Try hard things, and there’s always fallback. You can always do less and still have fun at it. Especially in college: smorgasbord! Try everything. Listen to the best professor, whether it’s a Latin professor or an economics professor. Stay away from law school, though. I don’t advise law school. That’s terrible; that’s bad news! That’s the only strong advice I can — I’m kidding, even there!</p> <p><strong>What makes a great scientist? What are the qualities that go into success in your field?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: You have to be arrogant, in a sense, because you’re trying to answer very deep questions. You need a certain amount of self-confidence. That’s a kinder, gentler word than arrogance. Of course, you’ve got to have analytical abilities, or experimental abilities, or creativity. Creativity is an interesting quality because generally it peaks very early in a person’s life and begins to fade away.</p> <p>Many, many great theoretical breakthroughs in physics and mathematics were done by very young people. Of course, you have to know something, so that’s experience, and experience grows with age. Creativity is declining with age. You’ve got to find that balance between the two, which will give you your peak years of accomplishment. If you have pure creativity, but you don’t know anything, it’s too bad. Sometimes it’s bad to know too much. I remember Wolfgang Pauli — a very famous Austrian physicist, complaining about his own lack of creativity — said, “Ach, I know too much!” You see, if you know too much, then you don’t have that fresh view which allows you to see the breakthrough idea.</p> <p><strong>The forest for the trees?</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: That’s right. If your mind is cluttered with the garbage of the work that we know, you’re not going to be able to see that crystalline new idea. It was the child who said, “Hey, Ma! The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!” For a creative scientist, it’s very good to get started early. Skip things and begin to accumulate the ability to do research. That’s what we really keep emphasizing: research experience, even as an undergraduate. Get into the lab and begin to dabble with things a little bit. You don’t have to learn everything, but begin to address the basic issues as soon as you can.</p> <p><strong>Curiosity is important, too.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Oh, yeah. I think curiosity is important. Ego’s important too. You’re driven by ego. It’s you who are going to find this thing! You can’t pretend that it isn’t ego. That would be nonsense. You have to understand yourself, and ego is an enormously important drive in all of us. You’re a human being, and you want to be recognized. Competitiveness, unfortunately, is there, too. One likes to moderate that. Total obsession is important, I think, but you’ve got to limit it.</p> <p>More and more, scientists are working in teams, and that becomes a moderating influence. Maybe the total obsession can carry you for the 36-hour day, and the twelve-day week, and the seven-week month, but at some point, you’ve got to stop and go skiing, read a poem, or go see a movie, or do something else to unwind and let your mind relax. You’ve got to have some other interests. It’s not enough to be a totally dedicated scientist. You won’t make it.</p> <p>These days, more and more, you have to interact with other people and understand their problems. Increasingly, we need women and minorities in science. Given this kind of obsessiveness and total dedication, we have to adjust to the fact that there are complex lives out there. These days, the two-career family is normal. It’s no longer true that the man is free to do the science, and the woman stays home and takes care of him. That’s not always going to work. So if we want scientists, we do have to make important adjustments, institutionally.</p> <p><strong>Thank you. That was great.</strong></p> <p>Leon Lederman: Okay.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Leon Lederman, Ph.D. Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>14 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-AP_495154619342.jpg" data-image-caption="November 2014, Batavia, Illinois: Nobel Prize in Physics winner Dr. Leon M. Lederman. The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Dr. Leon Lederman has sold for $765,002. The online auction went into overtime on Thursday, May 28, 2015, until a final bid went unchallenged for half an hour. Nate D. Sanders Auctions spokesman Sam Heller says the final amount is the fourth-highest ever paid among the ten Nobel Prizes that have been sold at auction. The 92-year-old has said he decided to sell the prize because it has just been sitting on a shelf. (Reidar Hahn, Fermilab via AP)" data-image-copyright="Leon M. Lederman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-AP_495154619342-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-AP_495154619342-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67631578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078.jpg" data-image-caption="Leon Lederman, Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. His early award-winning research in high energy physics brought him into national science policy circles, and in 1963, he proposed the idea that became the National Accelerator Laboratory. In 1977, Lederman led the team that discovered the bottom quark at Fermilab. The following year, Lederman was named director, and his administration brought Fermilab into its position of scientific prominence with the achievement of the world’s most powerful superconducting accelerator, the Tevatron. He served as Fermilab’s director until 1989. (Photo by Kevin Fleming/Corbis via Getty)" data-image-copyright="Lab Director Talking on the Telephone" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078-380x257.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612303078-760x514.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634.jpg" data-image-caption="June 24, 1982: Awards Council member and President of Caltech from 1946 to 1969, Dr. Lee DuBridge, presenting the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award at the Banquet ceremonies held in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Getty)" data-image-copyright="1982 Academy of Achievement" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-956193634-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2258064516129" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592.jpg" data-image-caption="December 6, 1995: Leon M. Lederman leaves the atomic bomb monument, behind him, at Hiroshima Peace Park, a memorial park in the center of Hiroshima, Japan dedicated to the legacy of Hiroshima — as the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear attack — and to the memories of the bomb’s direct and indirect victims. Lederman attended the Future of Hope Conference sponsored by the Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and the Asahi Shimbun. Seen in the far background is the A-Bomb Dome, from the world’s first atomic raid on Hiroshima. Leon Lederman has co-chaired the <i>Bulletin of Atomic Scientists</i>’ Board of Sponsors since 2009. The members of the <i>Bulletin</i>’s Board of Sponsors are recruited by their peers from among the world’s most accomplished scientific leaders to amplify the gravity and importance of what the <i>Bulletin</i> publishes and to provide expert counsel on issues of global security, science, and survival, particularly for the organization’s annual Doomsday Clock statement. The BAS Board was founded in 1948 by Albert Einstein, and its first chair was J. Robert Oppenheimer; it currently includes 16 Nobel Laureates. Lederman was elected chair emeritus in 2015, the first time the <i>Bulletin</i> has bestowed such an honor. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara)" data-image-copyright="LEON LEDERMAN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592-310x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_9512060592-620x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.46578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos.jpg" data-image-caption="Left to right: One-year-old Leon Lederman in 1923; Leon Lederman celebrates his bar mitzvah in New York, July 15, 1935; Morris and Minna Lederman, parents of Leon Lederman. Lederman was born in New York on July 15, 1922, of immigrant parents. His father, Morris, operated a hand laundry and venerated learning. He majored in chemistry at City College of New York, “but fell under the influence of such future physicists as Isaac Halpern and my high school friend Martin J. Klein.” After graduating in 1943, Leon Lederman spent three years in the U.S. Army, where he rose to the rank of 2nd lieutenant in the Signal Corps. In September of 1946, Lederman entered the Graduate School of Physics at Columbia, chaired by Isidor Isaac Rabi. (Photos courtesy of Fermilab Visual Media Services)" data-image-copyright="lederman-3photos" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos-380x177.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lederman-3photos-760x354.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5169660678643" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448.jpg" data-image-caption="October 1988: Physicist Leon Lederman, after learning he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger for their neutrino beam method and the discoveries made using it. The experiment was planned when the three researchers were associated with Columbia University in New York and carried out using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at Brookhaven National Accelerator Laboratory on Long Island, New York. The year they were awarded the prize, Leon Lederman was director of the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, near Chicago, Illinois, where the world’s largest proton accelerator is situated. Melvin Schwartz, formerly a professor at Columbia and Stanford Universities, was president of his own firm, specializing in computer communications, in Mountain View, California. Jack Steinberger, an American citizen, worked as a senior physicist at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, where he had led a number of large experiments in elementary particle physics, including experiments that employ neutrino beams. (Photo: Michael L. Abramson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Leon M. Lederman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448-250x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-50461448-501x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4700193423598" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle.jpg" data-image-caption="<i>1989: The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?</i> by Leon Lederman with science writer Dick Teresi. Lederman explains why he gave the Higgs boson the nickname “the God Particle.” He wrote, “This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, to another book, a much older one…”" data-image-copyright="wp-The-God-Particle" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle-259x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-The-God-Particle-517x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.005291005291" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107.jpg" data-image-caption="2008: Leon Lederman in front of a chalkboard for an essay he wrote for the September 15, 2008 issue of <i>Newsweek, “What We’ll Find Inside the Atom</i>.” During his term as director of Fermilab, Lederman emphasized the importance of math and science education as outreach to the neighboring communities. He then initiated the Saturday Morning Physics lectures and subsequently founded the Friends of Fermilab, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and the Teacher’s Academy for Mathematics and Science. (© Michael L. Abramson/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Leon Lederman" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107-378x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-177382107-756x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.501976284585" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen.jpg" data-image-caption="June 2012: Days before their departure from Batavia, Illinois, for Driggs, Idaho, Director Emeritus Leon Lederman and his wife, Ellen, pose under an ivy-covered trellis with their faithful four-legged friend. (Photo: Reidar Hahn)" data-image-copyright="wp-leon-ellen" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-leon-ellen-506x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0160427807487" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214.jpg" data-image-caption="February 27, 2002: Dr. Leon M. Lederman moving the hands of the <i>Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists</i>' "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight at the University of Chicago. The hands of the Doomsday Clock, for 55 years a symbol of nuclear danger, were moved two minutes closer to midnight, reflecting the possibility of terrorism, relations between India and Pakistan, and other threats. The symbolic clock had been set at 11:51 since 1998." data-image-copyright="GettyImages-703214" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214-374x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GettyImages-703214-748x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.675" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057.jpg" data-image-caption="October 19, 1988: Leon Lederman, Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, points to a sign on his office door after being named co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Leon Lederman received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino.” (© AP Photo)" data-image-copyright="AP_881019057" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_881019057-760x513.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.122599704579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos.jpg" data-image-caption="1995: <i>From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery</i> by Leon Lederman and David Schramm. Particle physicists explore the microworld of the atom; cosmologists study the universe on a large scale. This study follows the merger of these fields to define the theory of everything. It describes the development of the current views of the nature of space, time, matter and fundamental forces, and explores what these views reveal about the formation of the universe. The text expands on some of the discoveries of 20th-century science, the explorations of inner space and outer space, and promises they hold for decoding beginnings, endings, and the ultimate laws of nature." data-image-copyright="From Quarks to Cosmos" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos-339x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/From-Quarks-to-Cosmos-677x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.675" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612291998.jpg" data-image-caption="Leon Lederman, particle physicist and director of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. (Photo by Kevin Fleming/Corbis via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Leon Lederman Smoking a Pipe" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612291998-380x257.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-GettyImages-612291998-760x513.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67105263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio.jpg" data-image-caption="Marvin Minsky, pioneer of artificial intelligence, and Leon Lederman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, exchange ideas between symposiums at the 2001 American Academy of Achievement in San Antonio, Texas." data-image-copyright="wp-Marvin Minksy and Leon Lederman - 2001 Summit San Antonio" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/03/wp-Marvin-Minksy-and-Leon-Lederman-2001-Summit-San-Antonio-760x510.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on March 17, 2019</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration analytical curious resourceful explore-nature explore-the-world teach-others write " data-year-inducted="1962" data-achiever-name="Gell-Mann"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/gell-man_760_SQUARE-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/gell-man_760_SQUARE-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize in Physics</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1962</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration analytical curious explore-nature shy-introverted resourceful " data-year-inducted="2007" data-achiever-name="Mather"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mat1-008a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mat1-008a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">John C. 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Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jennifer-a-doudna-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jennifer A. Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235230/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. 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