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Burton Richter

Burton RichterBorn: 22-Mar-1931
Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY
Died: 18-Jul-2018
Location of death: Stanford, CA
Cause of death: Heart Failure

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist
Party Affiliation: Democratic

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Co-Discoverer of J/psi meson

American physicist Burton Richter discovered a previously-unknown subatomic particle, the psi-particle (now called the J/psi meson) in 1974, announced in a paper with 34 co-authors from his team at Stanford. He was a driving force in the design, struggle for funding, and construction of the Stanford Positron-Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR), an advanced particle collider which led to his group's work. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1976, sharing the honor with Samuel C. C. Ting, who made the same discovery using a different methodology in concurrent but independent research.

Father: Abraham Richter (textile worker)
Mother: Fanny Pollack Richter
Wife: Laurose Becker (m. 1960, until his death, one daughter, one son)
Daughter: Elizabeth (b. 1961)
Son: Matthew (b. 1963)

    High School: Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, MD (attended)
    High School: Far Rockaway High School, Queens, NY (1948)
    University: BS Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1952)
    University: PhD Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1956)
    Scholar: Nuclear Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory (1956)
    Scholar: High-Energy Physics Laboratory, Stanford University (1956-67)
    Professor: Physics, Stanford University (1967-84)
    Professor: Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences, Stanford University (1984-)
    Administrator: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University (1984-99)

    E. O. Lawrence Award 1976
    Nobel Prize for Physics 1976 (with Samuel C. C. Ting)
    Member of the Board of Litel Instruments
    Member of the Board of Varian
    General Motors Scientific Advisory Committee
    American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1989
    American Association for the Advancement of Science
    American Physical Society President, 1994
    Bill Bradley for President
    CERN Fellow, 1975-76
    Democratic National Committee
    European Physical Society
    Federation of American Scientists Board of Sponsors
    JASON
    MoveOn.org
    National Academy of Sciences 1977
    National Science Foundation
    Scientists and Engineers for America Board of Directors
    US Atomic Energy Commission Funding
    Jewish Ancestry

Author of books:
Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century (2010)


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