Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Leon Lederman to speak March 28
Dr. Leon M. Lederman, recipient of the coveted Nobel Prize in Physics, will give two
talks at Austin Peay State University on Friday, March 28, 2008.
There will be a general talk, free and open to the public, from 1-2 p.m., March 28
in the Music/Mass Communication Building Concert Hall.
Designed primarily for the American Association of Physics Teachers (TAAPT) meeting
at APSU, the second talk, also open to the public, is slated for 7:30-9 p.m., March
28 in the Music/Mass Communication Building Concert Hall. A reception will follow.
Dr. Leon M. Lederman, recipient of the coveted Nobel Prize in Physics, will give two
talks at Austin Peay State University on Friday, March 28, 2008.
There will be a general talk, free and open to the public, from 1-2 p.m., March 28
in the Music/Mass Communication Building Concert Hall.
Designed primarily for the American Association of Physics Teachers (TAAPT) meeting
at APSU, the second talk, also open to the public, is slated for 7:30-9 p.m., March
28 in the Music/Mass Communication Building Concert Hall. A reception will follow.
Lederman, an experimental physicist, is director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science
Academy in Aurora in 1986 and has served as its residence scholar since then.
Born in 1922 in New York to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Lederman received a bachelor's
degree from the City College of New York in 1943 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University
in 1951. He joined the Columbia University faculty, eventually becoming the Eugene
Higgins Professor of Physics.
Lederman took an extended leave from Columbia in 1979 to head up Fermilab, directing
such physicists as David Kaplan. Lederman resigned from Columbia and Fermilab in 1989
and taught briefly at the University of Chicago before moving to the Illinois Institute
of Technology, where he serves as the Prizker Professor of Science.
Lederman is one of the main proponents of the 鈥淧hysics First鈥 movement, which seeks
to rearrange the current high school science curriculum so physics precedes chemistry
and biology.
Throughout his distinguished career, Lederman has received many honors. He received
fellowships from the Ford, Guggenheim, Ernest Kepton Adams foundations as well as
the National Science Foundation. He is a founding member of the High Energy Physics
Advisory Panel to the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Committee on
Future Accelerators.
Among his many awards, he has received the National Medal of Science (1965) and the
Wolf Prize for Physics (1982).
Without question, Lederman's crowning achievement occurred in 1988 when he, Melvin
Schwartz of Mountainview, Calif., and Jack Steinberger of Geneva, Switzerland, were
presented the Nobel Prize in Physics for their neutrino beam method and the discoveries
made using this.
The experiment began when the three researchers were associated with Columbia University
and was carried out at Brookhaven National Accelerator Laboratory on Long Island.
According to the Web site for the Nobel Prize in Physics 1988, the men were rewarded
for work 鈥渢hat opened entirely new opportunities for research into the innermost structure
and dynamics of matter.鈥
For more information about Lederman's visit to APSU, contact Dr. Spencer Buckner,
associate professor of physics and astronomy, by telephone at (931) 221-6241 or e-mail
buckners@apsu.edu. -- Dennie B. Burke