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Leon M. Lederman

File:HD.3F.001_(11086394836).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Leon M. Lederman

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

American mathematician and physicist

OverviewAI-generated

Leon M. Lederman was an American male author and physicist who lived from 1922 to 2018. He is recognized in the Nobel Physics collection and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection. His published works include *The God Particle*, *La Particula Divina*, *Enfants, chercheurs et citoyens*, and *Nuclear and particle physics annual*.

Lederman’s writings have been cataloged with varying counts, including five works according to Crossref and fourteen according to Open Library. He is also associated with an Erdős number of 6. A quote attributed to him states, "Science is not about status quo. It’s about revolution."

Synthesized by Vinony from 21 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still 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

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

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

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

    · 1957 · cited 17,076x

  2. A Theory of Social Comparison Processes

    · 1954 · cited 14,486x

  3. Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis

    · 2022 · cited 13,904x

  4. PhysioBank, PhysioToolkit, and PhysioNet

    · 2000 · cited 12,095x

  5. GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral

    · 2017 · cited 8,263x

via Crossref · CC0

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.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Nobel Prize

  • The Nobel Prize in Physics1988

    “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino”

    Shared · 1/3 portion

NobelPrize.org →

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Leon
Gender
male
Citizenship
United States
Place of birth
New York City
Place of death
Rexburg
Occupation
physicist
Employer
Columbia University
Languages spoken
English language
Religion
agnosticism
Award
Washington Award
Field of work
physics
Sport
chess
Conflict
World War II
Military branch
United States Army
Image
Leon M. Lederman.jpg
Show 11 more facts
member of
American Physical Society
Commons category
Leon M. Lederman
date of birth
1922-07-15
Erdős number
6
nominated for
Nobel Prize in Physics
name in native language
Leon Max Lederman
date of death
2018-10-03
manner of death
natural causes
cause of death
dementia
maintained by WikiProject
WikiProject Mathematics
interested in
physics
Sources (11)

via Wikidata · CC0

~9 min read

Encyclopedic overview

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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Leon M. Lederman” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (2)

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via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0