Burton Richter (March 22, 1931 – July 18, 2018) was an American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

(BNL) team led by Samuel Ting for which they won

Nobel Prize for Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

in 1976. This discovery was part of the November Revolution of particle physics. He was the SLAC director from 1984 to 1999.

Life and work

A native of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, Richter was born into a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, and was raised in the

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

neighborhood of

Far Rockaway Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the eastern part of the Rockaway peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood extends from Beach 32nd Street east to the Nassau County line ...

. His parents were Fanny (Pollack) and Abraham Richter, a textile worker. He graduated from

Far Rockaway High School Far Rockaway High School was a public high school in New York City, at 821 Bay 25th Street in Far Rockaway in the borough of Queens. It operated from 1897 to 2011. Its alumni include three Nobel Prize laureates and convicted fraudster Bernard ...

, a school that also produced fellow laureates

Baruch Samuel Blumberg Baruch Samuel Blumberg (July 28, 1925 April 5, 2011), known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepa ...

and

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...

. He attended

Mercersburg Academy Mercersburg Academy (formerly Marshall College and Mercersburg College) is an independent selective college-preparatory boarding & day high school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania in the United States. Founded in 1893, the school enrolls approximat ...

in Pennsylvania, then continued on to study at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1952 and his PhD in 1956. He then joined the faculty of Stanford University, becoming a full professor in 1967. Richter was director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) from 1984 to 1999. He was a Senior Fellow of the

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

and Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences Emeritus of Stanford University. As a professor at Stanford, Richter designed the

SPEAR A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fasten ...

(Stanford Positron-Electron Asymmetric Ring)

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle ...

with the help of another Stanford physics professor, David Ritson. When eventually resources were secured, Richter led the building of SPEAR, with the support of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. With it he led a team that discovered a new subatomic particle he called a ''ψ'' (

psi Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to: Alphabetic letters * Psi (Greek) (Ψ, ψ), the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic) (Ѱ, ѱ), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviatio ...

). This discovery was also made by the team led by Samuel Ting at

, but he called the particle ''J''. The particle thus became known as the J/ψ meson. Richter and Ting were jointly awarded the 1976

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

for their work. During 1975 Richter spent a sabbatical year at CERN where he worked on the ISR experiment R702. In 1987, Richter received the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

. Richter was a member of the JASON advisory group and served on the board of directors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in

American government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

. Richter was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2003. In May 2007, he visited

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and

Sharif University of Technology Sharif University of Technology (SUT; fa, دانشگاه صنعتی شریف) is a public research university in Tehran, Iran. It is widely considered as the nation's most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology, engineering ...

. Richter is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

in May of 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the

Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...

’s

Office of Science The Office of Science is a component of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The Office of Science is the lead federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for energy and the Nation’s largest supporter of basic research in t ...

, the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, and the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

. In 2012, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

announced that Burton Richter was a co-recipient of the

Enrico Fermi Award The Enrico Fermi Award is a scientific award conferred by the President of the United States. It is awarded to honor scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It was establ ...

, along with

Mildred Dresselhaus Mildred Dresselhaus''Mildred Dresselhaus'' was elected in 1974

. In 2014, President Obama also awarded Richter the 2012

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

. His citation read, "For pioneering contributions to the development of electron accelerators, including circular and linear colliders, synchrotron light sources, and for discoveries in elementary particle physics and contributions to energy policy." In 2013, Richter commented on an open letter from

Tom Wigley Tom Michael Lampe Wigley is a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide. He is also affiliated with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). He was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Scienc ...

, Kerry Emanuel,

Ken Caldeira Kenneth Caldeira (born 1960) is an American atmospheric scientist. His areas of research include ocean acidification, climate effects of trees, intentional climate modification, interactions in the global carbon cycle/climate system, and sustain ...

, and James Hansen, that Angela Merkel was "wrong to shut down nuclear". In 2014, Richter was among the residents of a continuing care retirement center who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against a continuing care retirement home's financial practices. Richter died on July 18, 2018 in

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the 2020 census. Stanford is an unincorporated area of ...

at the age 87.

References

Publications

*Barber, W. C.; Richter, B.; Panofsky, W. K. H.; O'Neill, G. K. & B. Gittelman
"An Experiment on the Limits of Quantum Electro-dynamics"
High-Energy Physics Laboratory at Stanford University,

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), Office of Naval Research, (June 1959). *Richter, B
"Design Considerations for High Energy Electron – Positron Storage Rings"
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University,

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (November 1966). *Boyarski, A. M.; Coward, D.; Ecklund, S.; Richter, B.; Sherden, D.; Siemann, R. & C. Sinclair
"Inclusive Yields of pi, pi, K, and K from H Photoproduced at 18 GeV at Forward Angles"
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University,

(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (1971). *Richter, B
"Total Hadron Cross Section, New Particles, and Muon Electron Events in ee Annihilation at SPEAR"
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University,

(through predecessor agency the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA)), (January 1976). *Richter, B
"Forty-five Years of ee Annihilation Physics: 1956 to 2001"
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,

, (August 1984). *Richter, B
"Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics"
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,

, (February 16, 2007). *Richter, B. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Changes and Energy in the 21st Century. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

External links

* including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1976 ''From the Psi to Charm – The Experiments of 1975 and 1976''
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1976Richter Burton
Nobel Luminaries Project,

The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, formerly the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, is located in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the center of the Tel Aviv University campus in Ramat Aviv. ANU - Museum of the Jewish People is an institution ...

SLAC Flickr albumNIF Secretary of Energy BoardHonoring Burton Richter
at APS April 2019
Persis Drell, Vera Luth, and Maury Tigner, "Burton Richter", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2022)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richter, Burton 1931 births 2018 deaths Nobel laureates in Physics American Nobel laureates Enrico Fermi Award recipients Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of JASON (advisory group) Stanford University SLAC faculty Jewish American scientists Jewish physicists Mercersburg Academy alumni American people of German-Jewish descent Far Rockaway High School alumni People from Far Rockaway, Queens 21st-century American physicists 20th-century American physicists People associated with CERN Scientists from New York (state) MIT Department of Physics alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society Presidents of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Presidents of the American Physical Society

Life and work

See also

References

Publications

External links