Nobel Prize Winner in Physics to Visit FAMU

Nobel laureate Jerome Friedman, Ph.D. will keynote a series of lectures for the Florida A&M University (FAMU) Department of Physics on Thursday, February 21, at 4 p.m. in Lee Hall Auditorium.

Friedman is also scheduled to tour the facilities at the Humphries Science Research Center located on Martin Luther King Blvd.

“Dr. Friedman has generously offered his time to come and speak with us at FAMU,” said Ray H. O’Neal, an associate professor of physics at FAMU and the faculty member that invited Friedman to speak on campus. “His work from which he was awarded the Nobel Prize was a significant step in the foundation of the modern theory of the structure of matter, also known as the standard model.”

O’Neal, a former student of Friedman, attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where Friedman was his undergraduate thesis advisor. According to O’Neal, the National Science Foundation Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) Center for Astrophysical Sciences and Technology (CAST) grant is sponsoring Friedman’s trip to FAMU.

About Jerome Friedman
A Chicago, Ill. native, Friedman developed a strong interest in physics after having read Relativity, by Einstein when he was only in high school. Friedman attended the University of Chicago on full-scholarship, where he obtained his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. After receiving his Ph.D., Friedman continued working as a post-doctorate at the University of Chicago nuclear emulsion laboratory, which was then led by Valentine Telegdi.

In 1980, Friedman became director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT and then served as head of the Department of Physics from 1983 to 1988. During that time, he held several administrative positions and he managed to maintain a foothold in research, which greatly eased his transition back to full-time teaching and research in 1988.

In 1990, Friedman, along with collaborators Henry W. Wendell and Richard E. Taylor, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.

Friedman was a member of the Board of the University Research Association for six years, serving as vice president for three years. He is currently a member of the High Energy Advisory Panel for the Department of Energy and also chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory.

Friedman is married to Tania Letetsky-Baranovsky, and has four adult children, Ellena, Joel, Martin, and Sandra.