Origins & Early Life

Melvin Schwartz ( SHWORTS; November 2, 1932 – August 28, 2006) was an American physicist. He shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon M. Lederman and Jack Steinberger for their development of the neutrino beam method and their demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino. Schwartz was Jewish.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

He grew up in New York City in the Great Depression and went to the Bronx High School of Science. His interest in physics began there at the age of 12. Schwartz earned his B.A. (1953) and Ph.D. (1958) at Columbia University, where Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi was the head of the physics department.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

He became an assistant professor at Columbia in 1958, was promoted to associate professor in 1960 and full professor in 1963. Tsung-Dao Lee, a Columbia colleague who had recently won the Nobel prize at age 30, inspired the experiment for which he received his Nobel. Schwartz and his colleagues performed the experiments which led to their Nobel Prize in the early 1960s, when all three were on the Columbia faculty. The experiment was carried out at the nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1966, after 17 years at Columbia...

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• 1932 Historical Timeline & Archive — Explore world events and figures from 1932
• November 2 (11-02) On This Day — Historical birthdays and events on November 2
• 2006 Historical Timeline & Archive — Explore world events and figures from 2006
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