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Jerome FriedmanAmerican physicist, professor, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1990.
Date of Birth: 28.03.1930
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Jerome Isaac Friedman
Jerome Isaac Friedman, an American physicist, professor, and Nobel laureate in Physics in 1990, was born on March 28, 1930, in Chicago, USA. His parents had emigrated from Russia to the United States. Friedman grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, where he completed his doctoral degree in physics in 1956.
Academic Career
After completing his studies, Friedman taught at the University of Chicago from 1956 to 1957 and then at Stanford University from 1957 to 1960. In 1960, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a professor and later became the head of the Department of Physics in 1983.
Research and Nobel Prize
Throughout his career, Friedman focused on research in the field of elementary particles. By the 1950s, physicists knew about the existence of protons and neutrons but were searching for smaller particles. In 1964, scientists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig proposed the existence of quarks, but they could not prove it.
Using a powerful new linear accelerator at Stanford, Friedman and his colleagues, Richard E. Taylor and Henry W. Kendall, conducted a series of experiments from 1967 to 1973. They bombarded protons with electrons and expected that the electrons would either pass through or bounce off. However, they discovered that when the electrons were accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light, most of them scattered off the protons at various angles. This unexpected result confirmed the presence of smaller particles, later named quarks.
For their groundbreaking research confirming the existence of quarks, Jerome Friedman, along with Taylor and Kendall, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990.
Legacy
Jerome Isaac Friedman's contributions to particle physics have had a significant impact on our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter. His experiments provided experimental evidence for the existence of quarks, which are now an essential concept in the field of particle physics. Friedman's work continues to inspire future generations of physicists and contribute to scientific advancements.
