Jack Steinberger

Jack Steinberger (1921–2020) was a German-born American experimental physicist who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the muon neutrino.

Melvin Schwartz: An American physicist who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for discovering the muon neutrino. He collaborated with Steinberger and Lederman on the experiment that established the muon neutrino.
Neutrino: A nearly massless, electrically neutral elementary particle that interacts through the weak force and gravity. The muon neutrino is one of the neutrino types distinguished by the experiment.
Nazi Germany: The German state under Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship from 1933 to 1945. Steinberger fled Germany as a Jewish child after the Nazis came to power.
Neutrino oscillation: The process by which neutrinos change flavor as they travel. Distinguishing neutrino flavors made it possible to pose the later question of whether they transform into one another.
Leon Lederman: An American experimental physicist who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for discovering the muon neutrino. His work with Steinberger and Schwartz demonstrated that muon neutrinos differ from electron neutrinos.
Muon neutrino: A neutrino associated with the muon in weak interactions, distinct from the electron neutrino. Its discovery was the achievement for which Steinberger shared the Nobel Prize.
Kindertransport: The rescue effort that brought about 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Nazi-controlled Europe to Britain before World War II. Steinberger was sent from Germany to the United States in 1934 through a related refugee rescue organized by his family.
Standard Model: The theory describing elementary particles and three of the four fundamental interactions. The muon neutrino became a distinct particle in the framework’s account of matter and weak interactions.
Enrico Fermi: An Italian-American physicist whose work spanned nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum theory. Steinberger worked in Fermi’s group at the University of Chicago after arriving in the United States.
Pion: A meson made of a quark and an antiquark, occurring in charged and neutral forms. The experiment generated neutrinos when charged pions decayed into muons and neutrinos.

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Leon M. LedermanRelated: Steinberger co-led the experiment that established the muon neutrino.