Editing Leon M. Lederman (section)

==Academic work==
In 1956, Lederman worked on [[Parity (physics)|parity]] violation in weak interactions. [[Richard Garwin|R. L. Garwin]], Leon Lederman, and R. Weinrich modified an existing cyclotron experiment, and they immediately verified the [[parity violation]].<ref>
{{cite journal
 |last1=Garwin |first1=R. L.
 |last2=Lederman |first2=L. M.
 |last3=Weinrich |first3=M.
 |year=1957
 |title=Observations of the Failure of Conservation of Parity and Charge Conjugation in Meson Decays: The Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon
 |journal=[[Physical Review]]
 |volume=105 |issue=4 |pages=1415–1417
 |bibcode=1957PhRv..105.1415G
 |doi=10.1103/PhysRev.105.1415
|doi-access=free
 }}</ref> They delayed publication of their results until after [[Chien-Shiung Wu|Wu]]'s group was ready, and the two papers appeared back-to-back in the same physics journal. Among his achievements are the discovery of the [[muon|muon neutrino]] in 1962 and the [[bottom quark]] in 1977.<ref name=nyto/> These helped establish his reputation as among the top particle physicists.<ref name=nyto/>

In 1976, a group of physicists, the [[E288 experiment]] team, led by Lederman announced that a particle with a mass of about 6.0 GeV was being produced by the Fermilab particle accelerator. After taking further data, the group discovered that this particle did not actually exist, and the "discovery" was named "[[Oops-Leon]]" as a pun on the original name, upsilon, and Lederman's first name. The name was reused for the [[upsilon meson]], which the group discovered from subsequent data in 1977 at a higher mass of 9.5 GeV.<ref>{{cite journal |author=J. Yoh |author1-link= |year=1998 |title=The Discovery of the ''b'' Quark at Fermilab in 1977: The Experiment Coordinator's Story |url=http://lss.fnal.gov/archive/1997/conf/Conf-97-432-E.pdf |journal=[[AIP Conference Proceedings]] |volume=424 |pages=29–42 |bibcode=1998AIPC..424...29Y |doi=10.1063/1.55114}}</ref>

As the director of [[Fermilab]], Lederman was a prominent supporter<ref name="SSC LA Times">{{cite news|last=ASCHENBACH|first=JOY|title=No Resurrection in Sight for Moribund Super Collider : Science: Global financial partnerships could be the only way to salvage such a project. But some feel that Congress delivered a fatal blow.|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-12-05-mn-64100-story.html|access-date=16 January 2013|newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=1993-12-05|quote=Disappointed American physicists are anxiously searching for a way to salvage some science from the ill-fated superconducting super collider ... "We have to keep the momentum and optimism and start thinking about international collaboration," said Leon M. Lederman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was the architect of the super collider plan}}</ref><ref name="HoddesonKolb2003">{{Cite journal|title=Vision to reality: From Robert R. Wilson's frontier to Leon M. Lederman's Fermilab|journal=Physics in Perspective|volume=5|issue=1|pages=67–86|arxiv=1110.0486|author1=Lillian Hoddeson |author2=Adrienne Kolb |quote=Lederman also planned what he saw as Fermilab's next machine, the Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC)|year=2011|doi=10.1007/s000160300003|bibcode=2003PhP.....5...67H|s2cid=118321614}}</ref> of the [[Superconducting Super Collider]] project, which was endorsed around 1983, and was a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.<ref name="Illinois Issues 1987">{{cite news|url=http://www.lib.niu.edu/1987/ii8706tc.html|title=Super competition for superconducting super collider|last=Abbott|first=Charles|date=20 June 1987|work=Illinois Issues|page=18|quote=Lederman, who considers himself an unofficial propagandist for the super collider, said the SSC could reverse the physics brain drain in which bright young physicists have left America to work in Europe and elsewhere.|access-date=1 Oct 2016}}</ref><ref name="Caltech">{{cite journal|last=Kevles|first=Dan|journal=California Institute of Technology "Engineering & Science"|volume=58 no. 2|issue=Winter 1995|pages=16–25|title=Good-bye to the SSC|url=http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/568/1/ES58.2.1995.pdf|access-date=16 January 2013|quote=Lederman, one of the principal spokesmen for the SSC, was an accomplished high-energy experimentalist who had made Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the development of the Standard Model during the 1960s (although the prize itself did not come until 1988). He was a fixture at congressional hearings on the collider, an unbridled advocate of its merits []}}</ref> Also at Fermilab, he oversaw the construction of the [[Tevatron]], for decades the world's highest-energy particle collider.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://mag.uchicago.edu/university-news/university-obituaries-35|title=University obituaries|website=The University of Chicago Magazine|language=en|access-date=2020-02-11}}</ref> Lederman later wrote his 1993 [[popular science]] book ''[[The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?]]'' – which sought to promote awareness of the significance of such a project – in the context of the project's last years and the changing political climate of the 1990s.<ref name="Calder 2005">{{cite book|last=Calder|first=Nigel|title=Magic Universe:A Grand Tour of Modern Science|year=2005|pages=369–370|publisher=OUP Oxford |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E4NfZ9FDcc8C&q=title+of+a+book&pg=PA370|quote=The possibility that the next big machine would create the Higgs became a carrot to dangle in front of funding agencies and politicians. A prominent American physicist, Leon lederman, advertised the Higgs as The God Particle in the title of a book published in 1993 ...Lederman was involved in a campaign to persuade the US government to continue funding the Superconducting Super Collider... the ink was not dry on Lederman's book before the US Congress decided to write off the billions of dollars already spent|isbn=9780191622359}}</ref> The increasingly moribund project was finally shelved that same year after some $2 billion of expenditures.<ref name="SSC LA Times" /> In ''The God Particle'' he wrote, "The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects" while stressing the importance of the [[Higgs boson]].<ref name="autogenerated5" />{{Rp|87}}<ref>{{Cite journal|date=3 April 1995|title=Observation of Top Quark Production in [anti-p] and [ p] Collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab|journal=Physical Review Letters|volume=74|issue=2626|doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626|pages=2626–2631|pmid=10057978 | last1 = Abe | first1 = F | last2 = Akimoto | first2 = H | last3 = Akopian | first3 = A |display-authors=etal |arxiv=hep-ex/9503002|bibcode=1995PhRvL..74.2626A|s2cid=119451328}}</ref>

In 1988, Lederman received the [[Nobel Prize for Physics]] along with [[Melvin Schwartz]] and [[Jack Steinberger]] "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the [[doublet structure]] of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino".<ref name=Nobel_biography/> Lederman also received the National Medal of Science (1965), the [[Elliott Cresson Medal]] for Physics (1976), the Wolf Prize for Physics (1982) and the [[Enrico Fermi Award]] (1992).<ref name=nyto/> In 1995, he received the [[Chicago History Museum]] "Making History Award" for Distinction in Science Medicine and Technology.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.chicagohistory.org/aboutus/from-the-president/MHA_Recipient_List_19952015.pdf|title=Making History Awards, 1995–2015 Honorees|date=2015|website=Chicago History Museum|access-date=4 October 2016|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624012521/http://www.chicagohistory.org/aboutus/from-the-president/MHA_Recipient_List_19952015.pdf|archive-date=24 June 2016}}</ref>