Paul Heinrich Söding (born 20 February 1933 in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, Germany) is a German physicist. He is best known for his work in

particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

and as former director of research of the German particle physics lab

DESY DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English: ''German Electron Synchrotron''), is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to ...

Career

Paul Söding studied physics at the universities of

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

in Germany. He was the first doctoral student of Willibald Jentschke in Hamburg. In 1964 he received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg. He subsequently did research at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in New York and the European particle physics research lab

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. In 1969 he became senior scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (

) in Hamburg. There he and his colleagues at the

TASSO TASSO (Two Arm Spectrometer SOlenoid) was a particle detector at the PETRA particle accelerator at the German national laboratory DESY. The TASSO collaboration is best known for having discovered the gluon, the mediator of the strong interaction an ...

detector used the

PETRA Petra (; "Rock"), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu (Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: or , *''Raqēmō''), is an ancient city and archaeological site in southern Jordan. Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit systems, P ...

positron-electron accelerator to observe the first direct evidence of the

gluon A gluon ( ) is a type of Massless particle, massless elementary particle that mediates the strong interaction between quarks, acting as the exchange particle for the interaction. Gluons are massless vector bosons, thereby having a Spin (physi ...

, the elementary particle that mediates the strong nuclear force. For that discovery, he was awarded together with Bjørn Wiik, Günter Wolf, and

Sau Lan Wu Sau Lan Wu (Chinese language, Chinese: 吳秀蘭; born May 11, 1940) is a Chinese-American particle physics, particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important cont ...

) with the Prize for High Energy and Particle Physics of the European Physical Society. As research director at DESY from 1982 till 1991 he contributed to the research program at the

HERA In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; ; in Ionic Greek, Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Oly ...

accelerator. His efforts to get the Tetraelectronvolt Energy Superconducting Linear Accelerator (TESLA) built at DESY were not successful. The project was, however, merged into the International Linear Collider (ILC) plans. After the German reunification in 1990, the former GDR institute for high energy physics at Zeuthen near Berlin was integrated into DESY. Paul Söding became director of this institute in 1991. It is mainly due to his efforts that the Zeuthen institute has gained global recognition. He retired from this position in 1998. In 1998 he was granted emeritus status. In 2001 his efforts were recognized with the German Federal Cross of Merit (First Class) Medal awarded by the German President. As of 2012 he is still active at the

Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

Publications

He was co-author of the "Review of particle properties" for several years. He was one of the original members of the "Meson Team" later renamed to the

Particle Data Group The Particle Data Group (PDG) is an international collaboration of particle physicists that compiles and reanalyzes published results related to the properties of particles and fundamental interactions. It also publishes reviews of theoretical ...

. He left the team in 1975.Talks. M Roos
dg.lbl.gov He wrote and co-authored several books in English and German and many papers on particle physics.

References

External links

Scientific publications of Paul Söding
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soding, Paul 1933 births Living people 20th-century German physicists Scientists from Dresden Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany People associated with CERN Fellows of the American Physical Society 21st-century German physicists University of Hamburg alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni