Melvin Shwartz

SCHWARTZ, MELVIN

Professor of Particle Physics at Columbia University, New York, USA.

1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, with Leon M. Lederman and Jack Steinberger, "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino."

Research interests :
His current research interests are involved with early experiments on the new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), to be completed at Brookhaven in 1997. It is expected that highly energetic collisions between relativistic heavy nuclei will lead to a totally new state of matter ÑQuark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) Ñin which the vacuum is excited into a collection of quarks and gluons that do not have the conventional hadronic structure. A current experiment being planned will search for characteristics of this new form of matter.

Prior experiments in which he has played a major role include :
1. Discovery of the muon type neutrino (1962). This experiment, carried out at Columbia in collaboration with Leon Lederman and Jack Steinberger, received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics.
2. Determination of charge asymmetry in KLÞ p± m+ n (1967). This experiment was one of the early demonstrations of CP violation in in K leptonic decay.
3. Production and detection of p - m Coulomb bound states (1976Ð82). In this series of experiments we produced hydrogen-like atoms made up of pions and muons.