STEINBERGER, JACK

STEINBERGER, JACK (1921– ), physicist, Nobel laureate. Steinberger was born in Bad Kissingen, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1935. He studied at the University of Chicago, from which he received his B.Sc. in chemistry in 1942 and his Ph.D. in physics in 1948. He was a professor at Columbia University from 1950 to 1971, with the title of Higgins Professor from 1967 to 1971. He was affiliated with the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1968, serving as its director from 1969 to 1972. In the early 1960s Steinberger and two colleagues, melvin schwartz and leon m. lederman , using the proton accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory near New York, developed a method to detect neutrinos, subatomic particles, with spin of one-half, no electric charge, very small mass, and therefore velocities very close to the speed of light, and very weak interactions, which make them elusive, difficult to detect, but also very useful in the study of the structure of the nucleon. In an experiment performed in 1962 they found a second variety of neutrinos in addition to the neutrino which was known to be emitted by some radioactive nuclei. This was an important step towards the present understanding that elementary particles are grouped in families. For this discovery they were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988.