Lederman, Leon Max

Lederman, Leon Max (led'urmun) [key], 1922–, American physicist, Ph.D. Columbia Univ., 1951. He was a professor at Columbia until he became director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. (1979–89). In the early 1960s, Lederman and co-researchers, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, discovered a new type of neutrino, which is a particle with no detectable electric charge or mass that moves at the speed of light. This led to the development of a new scheme for classifying families of subatomic particles. In 1988, Lederman, Schwartz, and Steinberger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

• • Cite
  • Print