Leon M. Lederman

Also known as Leon Lederman, Léon Lederman, Leon Max Lederman

American mathematician and physicist

AI overview

Leon M. Lederman was an American physicist who made significant contributions to the field of particle physics. His work helped advance our understanding of the fundamental particles and forces that make up the universe.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1922
Died: 2018
Works: 14

Top works

Enfants, chercheurs et citoyens
La Particula Divina
The God particle
Nuclear and particle physics annual
The God Particle

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Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United States
Active from: 1922-07-15
Active to: 2018-10-03

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Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
· 1957 · cited 16,823x
A Theory of Social Comparison Processes
· 1954 · cited 14,177x
Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis
· 2022 · cited 13,151x
PhysioBank, PhysioToolkit, and PhysioNet
· 2000 · cited 11,781x
GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
· 2017 · cited 8,084x

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Quotes

“Science is not about status quo. It’s about revolution.”
“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.”
“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?'”
“A time traveler from the year 1899 would be continually amazed by our advanced technology—our cars and airplanes, our skyscraper cities, our TV, radio, computers, and communication abilities. Probably the traveler would be most shaken by our science, from astronomy to zoology. The only place in which this visitor would be comfortably at home is in most of our high schools.”
“Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries.”
“The main virtue of the physics-chemistry-biology sequence is the hierarchical nature of the sciences. Physics comes first because it serves as a powerul prerequisite for chemistry and because it can more clearly illustrate the nature of the scientific process.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: Leon M. Lederman.jpg

Show 5 more facts

Commons category: Leon M. Lederman
date of birth: 1922-07-15
Erdős number: 6
name in native language: Leon Max Lederman
date of death: 2018-10-03

Sources (11)

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~9 min read

Article

Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.

An accomplished scientific writer, he became known for his 1993 book The God Particle establishing the popularity of the term for the Higgs boson.