Honorary Member
Nobel prize in physics, 1990
Date of admittance: 17/07/2017
Admission Speech: Are we really made of quarks?
(March 28, 1930). American physicist born in Chicago, Illinois. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research related to the structure of atomic nuclei. Specifically, he co-experimentally discovered the evidence of quarks.
Jerome Isaac Friedman, born in Chicago in 1930, is an American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990, alongside Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor, for his research on the structure of atomic nuclei and the role of quarks in particle physics. His experimental work was crucial in confirming the existence of quarks, a theory proposed by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig.
The son of Polish immigrants who arrived in the United States before World War I, he showed an early interest in both art and physics during his school years, ultimately choosing the latter after reading Einstein. In 1948, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1953 and his doctorate in 1956. During his time there, he had the opportunity to work with renowned physicist Enrico Fermi shortly before Fermi’s passing in 1954. His first research work was conducted in the nuclear emulsion laboratory under the supervision of Professor Telegdi.
In 1957, he moved to Stanford University as an associate researcher and began collaborating with Henry Kendall and Robert Taylor under the supervision of Robert Hofstadter. His work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) allowed him to delve deeper into the study of matter’s structure. In 1960, he was appointed a faculty member of the Physics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which fostered closer collaboration between the SLAC team and the California Institute of Technology.
From 1967 onward, he held the position of full professor at MIT, where, between that year and 1973, he conducted experiments that helped demonstrate the existence of quarks, solidifying one of the most significant theories in particle physics. In 1980, he became director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and between 1983 and 1988, he served as head of the Physics Department. In 1988, he decided to return to research and teaching at MIT, where he also served as vice president for three years.
His contributions to physics are undeniable, as his research has been fundamental to the modern understanding of matter’s structure. Receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 was the pinnacle of a career dedicated to the exploration of subatomic particles, whose impact continues to resonate in contemporary science.
