Maurice Goldhaber, 1998
Citation:
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.
In 1954, Goldhaber first questioned whether protons could decay, a
query still pursued today. During 1956-58, Goldhaber, Grodzins, and
Sunyar performed a brilliant experiment that showed conclusively that
the neutrino is created with negative helicity (a left-handed screw
driven forward). This provided conclusive evidence for the
Vector-Axial Vector theory of weak interactions that is an integral
part of today's Standard Model. This thought revolution led to the
overthrow of parity conservation in the weak interactions (a
fundamental symmetry principle that had guided thinking up to that
time).
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.