Leon Lederman, Nobel winner who coined ‘God Particle’, dead at 96
The title refers to a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, long theorised until a powerful European particle collider confirmed its existence
Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist who won a Nobel Physics Prize for his work on subatomic particles and coined the phrase “God particle”, died Wednesday at 96.
Lederman directed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago from 1978 to 1989.
He’s described as a giant in his field who also had a passion for sharing science, resulting in his book, The God Particle.
The title refers to a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, long theorised until a powerful European particle collider confirmed its existence.
Lederman died at a nursing home in the Idaho town of Rexburg, said Ellen Carr Lederman, his wife of 37 years.
“What he really loved was people, trying to educate them and help them understand what they were doing in science,” she said.
Lederman won the Nobel Physics Prize in 1988 with two other scientists for discovering a subatomic particle called the muon neutrino.
