Burton Richter Biography

Burton Richter was born on March 22, 1931, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Albert Richter, and his wife, Fanny. His father was employed in the textile industry.

Burton studied at the well-known Far Rockaway High School located in New York. The school had also been attended by Nobel Laureates like Richard Feynman and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Subsequently, he attended the exclusive private boarding school Mercersburg Academy located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.

After graduating from high school, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to study physics or chemistry as a major. However, he opted for physics and graduated in the subject in 1952. Four years later he earned his doctorate from the same institute.

In 1957, he collaborated with G.K. O’Neill, W.C. Barber and B. Gittelman to create a colliding beam machine that would help researchers in studying electron-electron scattering on a much larger centre of mass. The project was completed after six years and the machine was the first of its kind.

He worked on SPEAR with David Ritson and in 1973, they successfully built it. However, even more importantly, he used the SPEAR to discover a new particle that was subatomic in nature. He named the particle psi. Samuel Ting made the same discovery in a different project.

In 1984, Burton Richter was appointed as the director of Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre and he remained in the position for 15 years. His studies on beam dynamics as well as accelerator physics were particularly notable.

He was a member of the JASON advisory group, an independent group of scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology. He also served on the board of directors of Scientists and Engineers for America; the organization promotes sound science in American government.

His most important work is the discovery of the subatomic particle psi that later came to be known as psi/j meson as another scientist had simultaneously discovered the particle in an independent study. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for that discovery.

In 2010, Burton Richter was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award by the US Department of Energy.

Burton Richter married Laurose Becker in 1960. The couple had a daughter named Elizabeth and a son named Matthew.

Burton Richter died on July 18, 2018, of heart failure. He was 87.