Union may have given Martin Perl, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics announced
recently, the nudge he needed to pursue a career in physics.
Perl was a young chemical engineer working at General Electric, when he took two
courses — advanced calculus and nuclear physics with Prof. Vladimir Rojansky.
“…Rojansky's lectures were so compelling he was left with no choice but to
resign from G.E. and pursue an advanced degree in physics,” wrote former professor
David Peak in a history of physics at Union (in Early Science and the First Century of
Physics at Union College by Ennis Pilcher).
In 1955, Perl received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and just a few weeks ago he
won the Nobel Prize for his 1975 discovery of a new elementary particle known as the tau
lepton.
Perl, who has been a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at
Stanford University since 1963, shares the prize with Frederick Reines of the University
of California at Irvine. The prize will be presented in Stockholm, Sweden, in December.
The tau lepton is a superheavy “cousin” of the electron, the carrier of
electric current in household appliances. The tau lepton and the electron are nearly
identical, except the tau is more than 3,500 times heavier than the electron and it
survives less than a trillionth of a second, while the electron is stable.
Perl was working at the Stanford Positron-Electron Asymmetric Ring (SPEAR) with 30
other physicists in the mid-1970s, when he began to find events that could not be
explained by any other sub-atomic particle. After over a year of work, Perl was able to
convince his colleagues that they were observing a new elementary particle, which he named
the “tau.”
In 1982, Perl was awarded the Wolf Prize for his discovery. He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and is a fellow with the American Physical Society. He is
currently group leader and chairman of the faculty at SLAC.
Rojansky was professor of physics at Union College from 1930 until 1955, and is
well-known for his work in quantum theory. Out of the Union Physics department have come
several recognized names; Lee Davenport '37, President of GTE and long-time Union trustee;
Gordon Gould '41 inventor of the laser, and Baruch Blumberg '45, Nobel prize winner in
medicine.