Leon Max Lederman (born July 15, 1922 in New York) is an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for his work on neutrinos. He is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois, in 1986.

He received his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1943, and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1951. He then joined the Columbia faculty and eventually became Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics. He took an extended leave of absence from Columbia in 1979 to become Fermilab's director. He resigned from Columbia and Fermilab effective in 1989 and taught briefly at the University of Chicago before moving to the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he is now Pritzker Professor Emeritus of Science.

His current occupation is a resident scholar in the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

Dr. Lederman is also one of the main proponents of the "Physics First" movement. Also known as "Right-side Up Science" and "Biology Last," this movement seeks to rearrange the current high school science curriculum so that physics precedes chemistry and biology.

A former president of the American Physical Society, Lederman also received the National Medal of Science and the Ernest O. Lawrence Medal.

Leon Lederman has been called a "modern day Leonardo Da Vinci" by the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology. He helped award top-scoring Naperville SAT/ACT middle school takers at IMSA in 2006.

Quotes

• "Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money."
• "Physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God, although you may be hard-pressed to find a mathematician that modest."
• "My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt."

Publications

• The God Particle : If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon M. Lederman, Dick Teresi (ISBN 0385312113)
• From Quarks to the Cosmos by Leon Lederman and David N. Schramm (ISBN 0716760126)
• Portraits of Great American Scientists Leon M. Lederman, et al (ISBN 1573929328)
• Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill (ISBN 1591022428)

External links

• Fermilab's Leon M. Lederman webpage
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1988
• Leon M. Lederman – Autobiography
• Timeline of Nobel Prize Winners in Physics webpage for Leon Max Lederman
• Story of Leon by Leon Lederman

1922 births | Living people | Columbia University alumni | Nobel Prize in Physics winners | American physicists | American mathematicians | National Medal of Science recipients | Jewish-American scientists | People from New York City | Illinois Institute of Technology faculty | Enrico Fermi Award recipients | Inductees of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit

Leon Max Lederman | Leon M. Lederman | Leon Max Lederman | レオン・レーダーマン | Leon Max Lederman | Leon Max Lederman | Leon M. Lederman