Leon M. Lederman Biography

Leon Lederman is a highly-decorated American experimental physicist whose research has helped understand the particles of nature and its basic forces. He began his education as a chemistry scholar but fell under the charms of physics and later became its strongest advocates. As a physicist, he is one of the main proponents of “Physics First”, a movement that aims to put physics ahead of other subjects of science, mainly chemistry and biology, in high school curriculum. He has chaired many boards namely the ‘American Physical Society’, ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’, ‘JASON defense advisory group’, and ‘Society for Science & the Public’. His discovery of the “muon neutrino” and its subsequent research fetched him the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is also a noted author with his most famous book being ‘The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?’ He is a staunch atheist. In his 90s now, he has been diagnosed with dementia and is being cared for by his wife Ellen. He currently works at the Illinois Institute of Technology as the Pritzker Professor of Science.