April 2, 1996
Contact: Jamie Lawson, (615) 322-2706

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Nobel Laureate Leon M. Lederman, whose research career has spanned four decades and includes many remarkable achievements, will deliver the Department of Physics and Astronomy's annual Francis G. Slack Lecture in Physics Monday, April 8.

Lederman, the Pritzker Professor of Science at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, will deliver a lecture titled "The Inner Space Outer Space Connection" Monday, April 8, at 4 p.m. in 4309 Stevenson Center. The public is invited to attend.

Lederman graduated from the City College of New York in 1943 and entered the U.S. Army. In 1951 he received his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University. He spent the next 28 years at Columbia directing the Nevis Laboratory and conducting research at Nevis, Brookhaven National Labs, (Long Island, N.Y.), CERN (Geneva, Switzerland), Lawrence Berkeley Lab (California), Princeton, Rutherford Lab (England) and Fermilab (Chicago). He became director of Fermilab in 1979.

Lederman's research career includes many landmark achievements. In 1956, his Columbia University team discovered the neutral K-meson particle. In 1961, Lederman and others discovered the muon neutrino, which provided the first proof that there is more than one type of neutrino, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988.

In 1977, he and his collaborators discovered evidence for a new elementary particle called the "bottom quark." The broad spectrum of experiments he led set the paradigm for modern nuclear physics and particle physics research.

Lederman has long recognized the importance of science education to the intellectual and economic health of society. He opened Fermilab to countries not previously associated with high-energy physics, especially Latin American countries. He also initiated more than 15 programs introducing topics in modern physics to high school students, elementary school teachers and college teachers. Under his leadership, the Teachers' Academy of Mathematics and Science in Chicago and the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, the first three-year, statewide residence public high school for gifted children, recently were established.

Lederman has won many awards throughout his career including the Nobel Prize in Physics (1988), the National Medal of Science (1965), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1983) and the Enrico Fermi Award (1992).

A popular after-dinner speaker, his sense of humor is well known in the scientific community.

The Slack Lecture was endowed by former Vanderbilt Professor Frances Goddard Slack and his wife, Mary, and their friends, former students and colleagues.

Slack, who made major contributions in nuclear science and applied nuclear energy research, was appointed associate professor of physics at Vanderbilt University in 1928. He became Landon C. Garland Professor of Physics and chairman of the department in 1939. In World War II, he was a division leader in the Manhattan Project. After retirement, he continued his interest in physics and Vanderbilt until his death in 1985.