Maurice Goldhaber

Maurice Goldhaber
Born	April 18, 1911(1911-04-18) Lemberg, Austria-Hungary now called Lviv, Ukraine
Died	May 11, 2011(2011-05-11) (aged 100) East Setauket, New York
Residence	United States
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	Cavendish Laboratory
Alma mater	University of Berlin Cambridge University
Doctoral advisor	James Chadwick
Known for	Neutrinos and negative helicity
Notable awards	National Medal of Science (1983) Wolf Prize (1991) J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1992) Fermi Award (1998).

Maurice Goldhaber (April 18, 1911 – May 11, 2011)^[1] was an Austrian-born American physicist, who in 1957 (with Lee Grodzins and Andrew Sunyar) established that neutrinos have negative helicity.

Early Life and Childhood

He was born on April 18, 1911 in Lemberg, Austria now called Lviv, Ukraine.

Education

After beginning his physics studies at the University of Berlin, he earned his doctorate at Cambridge University in 1936.

Career

In 1934, working at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England he and James Chadwick, through what they called the nuclear photo-electric effect, established that the neutron has a great enough mass over the proton to decay.

He moved to the University of Illinois in 1938. In the 1940s with his wife Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber he established that beta particles are identical to electrons.

He joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1950. With Edward Teller he proposed that the so-called "giant-dipole nuclear resonance" was due to the neutrons in a nucleus vibrating as a group against the protons as a group (Goldhaber-Teller model).

He made a well-known bet with Hartland Snyder in about 1955 that anti-protons could not exist; when he lost the bet, he speculated that the reason anti-matter does not appear to be abundant in the universe is that before the Big Bang, a single particle, the "universon" existed that then decayed into "cosmon" and "anti-cosmon," and that the cosmon subsequently decayed to produce the known cosmos. In the 1950s also he speculated that all fermions^[2] such as electrons, protons and neutrons are "doubled," that is that each is associated with a similar heavier particle. He also speculated that in what became known as the Goldhaber-Christie model, the so-called strange particles were composites of just 3 basic particles. He was Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1961 to 1973.

Among his many other awards, he won the National Medal of Science in 1983^[3], the Wolf Prize in 1991, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1992, and the Fermi Award in 1998.

Maurice Goldhaber's brother Gerson Goldhaber was a professor of physics at the University of California Berkeley; his son Alfred Scharff Goldhaber is a professor of physics at SUNY Stony Brook; his grandson (son of Alfred) David Goldhaber-Gordon is an assistant professor of physics at Stanford.

Death

Goldhaber died May 11, 2011 at his home in East Setauket, New York at 100.

References

• G. Feinberg, A.W. Sunyar, J. Weneser, A Festschrift for Maurice Goldhaber,New York Academy of Sciences (1993), ISBN 0897660862

1. ^ Kenneth Chang (2011-05-17). "Maurice Goldhaber, Atomic Physicist, Is Dead at 100". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/science/18goldhaber.html. Retrieved 2011-05-18. ""Dr. Goldhaber was director of the Brookhaven lab from 1961 to 1973, overseeing experiments there that led to three Nobel Prizes. His most famous contribution to science’s basic understanding of how the universe works involved the ghostly, perplexing subatomic particles known as neutrinos."" 
2. ^ Goldhaber, Maurice (2002), "A closer look at the elementary fermions.", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99 (1): 33–6, 2002 Jan 8, arXiv:hep-ph/0201208, Bibcode 2002PNAS...99...33G, doi:10.1073/pnas.221582298, PMC 117509, PMID 11773637, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=117509 
3. ^ Maurice Goldhaber at the The President's National Medal of Science

External links

• In Memoriam: Maurice Goldhaber
• BNL celebrates Goldhaber's 90th year
• Description of Goldhaber's spinning neutrino experiment
• Biography of Maurice Goldhaber at Fermi Award website
• Oral History interview transcript with Maurice Goldhaber 10 January 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives

Persondata
Name	Goldhaber, Maurice
Alternative names
Short description	American physicist
Date of birth	1911-04-18
Place of birth	Lemberg, Austria
Date of death	2011-05-11
Place of death	East Setauket, New York