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Martin L. Perl
Martin L. Perl was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1927. After working as an engineer
with the General Electric Co (1948-50) he took his PhD at Columbia University
(1955), and taught at the University of Michigan (1955-63) before joining
the faculty at Stanford University (1963). His area of study is elementary
particles, and it was his work in the 1970s, using the Stanford Linear
Accelerator, that led to his detection of the tau lepton - a short-lived,
heavyweight cousin of the electron and one of the fundamental building
blocks of matter. His discovery lends support to the 'Big Bang' theory
of creation. For this work he shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physics.
He has also worked on the applications of optics and electronics, and
is known as an environmentalist and long-standing opponent of nuclear
weapons. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow
of the American Physical Society (APS). Other prizes include the Wolf
Prize in Physics, 1982.