Leon Lederman Interview (page: 2 / 8) Nobel Prize in Physics	Print Interview

What person do you think most inspired you, growing up? You mentioned your brother. Were there teachers, or any other people?

Leon Lederman: There were a number of them. I don't think I could single one out. One of the guys that influenced most in high school was a young student who sending himself through college in the evenings, and he worked as a laboratory assistant in the high school. He taught us how to blow glass. We got very friendly with him, and I learned a little about chemistry techniques. He was a chemistry major in college and to us he was a real intellectual. He was the first person I met who was really intent on becoming a professional scientist. That's one example. In college, there were a number of role models around. They weren't people I really got to know, I read about them in the papers.

I remember reading about a famous physicist, Carl Andersen, who won the Nobel Prize in the '30's for discovering the positive electron. I remember a very romantic scene in the newspaper. He had to drag some apparatus up to the top of a mountain and, using the cosmic rays as a source of particles, he discovered this positive electron. To me that whole idea of going up to the top of the mountain to trap a particle was romantic, exciting, and added to this whole mystique.

I was a graduate student at Columbia University, which was one of the greatest departments ever in the '40's and '50's and '60's. There were great professors there, like I.I. Rabi, one of the key founders of modern American physics. Before World War II, most Americans had to go to Europe if they wanted a good education in physics. He went to Europe and came back, founded a school, in effect, on the East Coast, and his students spread out over the universities of America. The same thing happened with J. Robert Oppenheimer on the West Coast. Between the two of them, they really started American physics.

It sounds like you were in the right place at the right time.

Leon Lederman: Absolutely. During college, there was a great depression, and we didn't worry about getting jobs, because there weren't any jobs. So you just put it aside. Very few of us picked our subject matter because we thought we were going to get jobs. The depression was so pervasive that we said, "Hey, what are going to be unemployed in?" "I'm going to be unemployed in history, what are you going to be unemployed in?" "Well, I think I'll be unemployed in biology." We really had a free choice, because we didn't worry about what job would give us a big income, or had a good retirement plan.

How did you get along with your classmates? Were you a social type?

Leon Lederman: Pretty much a people type. I wanted to get along with people, and I think I got through college because I had friends who were supportive. It was the same, even more so, in graduate school. I always depended on people to help me, and if I could help them, that would be good. I'm pretty social.

In reading about your discoveries over the years, it becomes clear that you've got to be a team player to be a successful physicist. Isn't that so?

Leon Lederman: More and more, I think that's true. The team idea is still growing. There's still the option of the lonely scholar in his office at three in the morning who gets an idea. Even as a team player that can happen, because a lot of what you do as a team player you do alone. But the first thing you want to do when you get an idea is discuss it. You must talk about it. If you have a team, they know exactly what you're doing. They're on board right away, rather than this frustrating experience where you say, "Hey, I got this great idea," and they say "What are you talking about?"

But you're right that so-called collaborative research is growing in all fields. It's more prominent in subjects like astronomy, or particle physics, or oceanography, where you need large shared facilities, an ocean-going vessel that's fully equipped, or a telescope, or a particle accelerator that costs a few billion dollars. As nature's secrets become more subtle, the apparatus gets more complicated, and you need more team work.

Was there somebody who gave you a first important break in this career?

Leon Lederman: First break? No, it's hard to say. That's not the way it works. When I was a graduate student we were on an ascending curve in the growth of academic research and science. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a time of increasing budgets and increasing interest in science. Most of my professors thought well of me, and they spread the word, so, when I was looking for a position, I had loads of offers. It turned out that it was most convenient for me to stay where I was, because I had initiated some kind of research at Columbia University and, not wanting to lose any momentum, I just stayed where I was. I thought I'd stay there for a few years, and it turned out to be about 27, or so.

What did those professors see in you, that made them want to offer you a job?

Leon Lederman: I had a sense of humor. I think I was the first graduate student there to start a talk by telling a joke. It's amazing how few people use that important idea, that you don't take yourself too seriously, and yet you take the subject seriously. That was my technique. I had a way to see around things. I think humor helps you in that way. What is humor? It's sort of a shock effect that's bizarre, a twist to a story that you tell, and that's the way it is in research.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Leon Lederman: Let's take a metaphor. You have a trunk. And all kinds of combination locks and you know this trunk is important because you found it in an attic. It's covered with cobwebs, and must be really good. People are working on the combinations and you come in, sort of six months later, and they're all working on the combinations, and they have these papers and computer codes, and they're working out, and you say, "Look at all these bright guys. They haven't been able to get into the trunk. There's something they're missing." And you walk around the back -- the back is open. Nobody went to look at the back of the trunk. Well, it's kind of a silly metaphor but, in a way, science can often be that way. You know that a lot of very bright people have been working on a problem. You know there's a solution, right? So, you say, "What is it that they haven't thought about?"

[ Key to Success ] Vision

It's that quality of mind that I think I demonstrated as a graduate student. It was a new subject. We were involved in a subject which really was just beginning, and therefore already as a graduate student, I was an expert.

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