Dear colleagues,

I was distressed to learn of the death on October 3, at the age of 96, in Rexburg, Idaho, of Leon Lederman, the Frank L. Sulzberger Professor Emeritus of Physics in the Enrico Fermi Institute, a great educator and Nobel Prize winner who, as Rocky Kolb has said, was enormously instrumental in changing how physicists regard the value of public outreach and education. He was, in Michael Turner’s words, a true visionary. Lederman in fact recruited both Kolb and Turner to join him in the astrophysics group at the Fermilab. He completed the PhD at Columbia University in 1951. He conducted experiments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory that led to the discovery of the muon neutrino. It was primarily for this work that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988, shared with Jack Steinberger and Melvin Schwartz. Their work confirmed that elementary particles are grouped in pairs, an idea basic to the concept of the Standard Model. He proposed the idea for a National Accelerator Laboratory, which then became the Fermilab. His passion for science education was legendary. With Dick Teresi he authored the popular science book called The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? This book established the importance of the Higgs Boson. He was a prominent supporter of the Superconducting Super Collider Project, among other achievements too numerous to mention. We honor his memory.

-David Bevington, Secretary of Faculty Emeriti and co-chair, Emeriti Faculty Steering Committee

Read more about Prof. Lederman via UChicago News,  CBS Chicago, and the NYTimes.