Martin Lewis Perl American physicist, professor Date of Birth: 24.06.1927 Country: USA

Biography of Martin Lewis Perl

Martin Lewis Perl was an American physicist, professor, and social activist. He was born in New York, to Polish immigrants Oscar Perl and Faye Rosenthal.

During World War II, Perl served as a marine infantryman from 1944 to 1945. He completed his studies at the Chemical Faculty of the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn in 1948 and then worked at General Electric from 1948 to 1950. However, his interest in atomic physics led him to pursue a degree in physics at college and later at Columbia University, where he conducted research on elementary particles under the guidance of Professor Rabi.

In 1963, Perl was invited to work on the construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Here, he and his colleagues designed and built installations to confirm their scientific hypotheses. Throughout the 1970s, numerous experiments were conducted at Stanford, leading to several significant discoveries.

In the mid-1970s, Martin Perl discovered the elementary particle called the tau lepton. This discovery provided evidence for the Big Bang theory of the universe's creation. For his pioneering work on the third generation of elementary particles (tau lepton, tau neutrino, top and bottom quarks), Perl was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982.

Later, Perl shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 with physicist Frederick Reines. Perl also worked on the application of optics and electronics, as well as environmental protection issues. He remained a staunch opponent of nuclear weapons throughout his career.