| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
| |
| Lederman, Leon Max |
| |
| |
(l d´ rmn) (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 Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
|
|
