1990's Laureates
Maurice Goldhaber, 1998
For his lifetime of distinguished
research in nuclear and particle physics, including
his experiments providing key support for the standard
model, and for his superb contribution to science by
his leadership and vision as a manager of research.
His ideas and research results have had a wide impact
not only on physics and other science, but also on medicine
and technology.
Biography
Maurice Goldhaber's remarkable
achievements in research, teaching, and administration
have made him one of the world's most distinguished
nuclear and particle physicists. In 1934, as a 23-year-old
graduate student at Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory
at Cambridge University, Goldhaber approached James
Chadwick with the idea of photodisintegrating the recently
discovered deuteron, telling Chadwick that this would
be a good way of measuring the mass of the neutron,
a considerably controversial topic at the time. Chadwick
was enthusiastic about the idea and Goldhaber's experimental
career was launched. He and Chadwick were the first
to obtain a sufficiently accurate mass of the neutron
to conclude that the neutron was not a compound of a
proton and electron but really a new particle. From
this work came the deduction that neutrons were probably
unstable, discovered later as a property of all new
particles, and was thus a landmark result for the development
of modern nuclear and particle physics. Goldhaber and
Chadwick were also first to find that some light nuclei
break up when bombarded by slow neutrons: Lithium-6
yielding Hydrogen-3, which decays into Helium-3; Boron-10
emitting Helium-4; and Nitrogen-14 changing into Carbon-14.
Goldhaber later worked with his students on scattering
and absorption of slow neutrons to show that beryllium
could be a useful moderator for neutrons. His neutron
work has had important applications in science and technology.
From 1938 to 1950 at the University of Illinois, Goldhaber
pursued a wide variety of research problems in nuclear
physics, including excitation of nuclei with x-rays,
resonant scattering of slow neutrons, nuclear decay
schemes, and isomeric transitions. Goldhaber worked
with wife, the late Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber, to prove
that beta-rays are identical to atomic electrons. With
Edward Teller, he developed the concept of coherent
oscillations of the protons and neutrons in nuclei leading
to the giant dipole resonance.
After joining Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1950,
Goldhaber and Kenneth Bainbridge gave the first demonstration
that the electronic environment of an atom can influence
isomeric decay probability.
Shortly after Goldhaber's work on neutrino helicity,
he became Chairman of the Physics Department at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, and was soon thereafter selected
as Director of the Laboratory. A "hands-on"
type of director, Goldhaber instigated and presided
over an extraordinary period of scientific productivity
at Brookhaven. As a measure of the general scientific
ambiance he provided, three Nobel Prizes were awarded
in high energy physics for work at the laboratory during
his tenure. The medical research that indicated the
substantial role of sodium concentration in the development
of hypertension in sensitive subjects and the value
of the drug L-dopa in treating Parkinsonism and related
diseases was also conducted at the laboratory during
that time.
After Goldhaber's retirement from Brookhaven, he joined
the Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven (IMB) underground detector
collaboration. IMB obtained an upper limit on the rate
of proton decay. Both Kamiokande in Japan and IMB saw
the beautiful neutrino signal that resulted from the
supernova explosion known as "Supernova 1987A."
He is now a member of a large contingent of American
physicists who collaborate with Japanese colleagues
at SuperKamiokande, where proton decay and neutrino
oscillations are being studied. Recently, evidence for
neutrino oscillations was obtained there, implying that
neutrinos have mass.
Maurice Goldhaber was born in Lemberg, Austria, in
1911. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1936 at Cambridge
University, where he continued as the Charles Kingley
Bye Fellow of Magdalene College until 1938. In 1938,
he moved to the United States as Assistant Professor
in physics at the University of Illinois, becoming Professor
in 1945. In 1950, he moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory,
where he became Chairman of the Department of Physics
(1960), and Director (1961-73). Also, he was a Visiting
Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, England (1967), and
is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New York
at Stony Brook from 1961 to the present. Currently,
he is Distinguished Scientist Emeritus, Brookhaven Science
Associates.
Goldhaber is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow
of the American Physical Society (of which he was President
in 1983), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
Goldhaber has received many honors, including the Tom
W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics (American Physical
Society, 1971); U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Citation
for Meritorious Contributions (1973); honorary Ph.D.,
Tel-Aviv University (1974); honorary Doctor, University
of Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium (1982); J. Robert Oppenheimer
Memorial Prize (1982); honorary Doctor of Science, State
University of New York at Stony Brook (1983); National
Medal of Science (1983); American Academy of Achievement
Award (1985); Royal Society Rutherford Memorial Lecturer
(Canada, 1987); Rossi Prize of American Astronomical
Society, High Energy Astrophysics Division (shared as
member of Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven collaboration,
1989); Wolf Prize in Physics (Israel, 1991); and honorary
Doctor of Science, University of Notre Dame, 1992.
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