Lederman is a "Nobel Guy"!!
"When the phone rang at 5:45 this morning," Leon Lederman told a press conference on October 19, 1988, "I turned to my wife [Ellen] and joked, 'It's probably the Nobel Prize committee.'"
It was.
Dr. Leon M. Lederman, Fermilab's Director, has been named one of three 1988 Nobel Laureates in Physics for the Columbia University Neutrino Group's discovery, in 1962, of the muon neutrino at the Brookhaven National Laboratory AGS accelerator. Lederman shares the $390,000 award with his two co-leaders on that experiment, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger. All three will receive their awards on December 10, 1988, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Lederman's first reaction to the call from Stockholm was laughter; he then began calling family members with the news. The day's festivities began in earnest when a small group of well-wishers, including Accelerator Division Head Helen Edwards and Alvin Tollestrup, Co-spokeman for CDF, arrived at the Lederman home at 7:00 a.m. with champagne.
Once at work, the Director fielded phone calls in his office from the press and colleagues while a celebratory crowd of Fermilab staffers filled all the available space on the east side of Wilson Hall's second floor. At about 10:00 a.m., Lederman faced the press in 1 West.
"Of all the recognitions one can get," he began, "there's something very spooky about the Nobel Prize. It has its own special aura, because people like Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi and so many others who we venerate so much and who are our intellectual heritage are all part of this group [of Nobel Laureates]. Clearly it's a sobering experience.
"It is also a great day for the field of elementary particle physics and for Fermilab, because this award recognizes exactly the type of work that we're doing here today. I think this is just the first of a large number of Nobels that will be won at Fermilab, Be patient!
"In the case of this particular discovery, finding the second neutrino was the first step in organizing the fundamental particles into a picture which we sometimes call the Standard Model. The other important thing is that the neutrinos themselves became a tool that has been used for subsequent research. Hot and cold running neutrinos became a standard in big laboratories for learning about the fundamental structure of matter.
"But to me, the most encouraging aspect of an award such as this is that young people will hear about it and be inspired to carry on this most basic type of research. Those are the people who will figure out how to use these tools to solve the problems society faces, such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect. Neutrinos are part of a body of knowledge called basic research, and that body of knowledge will certainly be called upon to supply the technology that will improve the quality of life for the entire planet.
"The TEVATRON and the SSC and many other scientific tools are needed to encourage young aspirants to science to pitch in and help to advance science across the entire frontier."
