SLAC Nobel Prizes

Burton Richter (SLAC) and Samuel C. C. Ting (MIT)shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind." (Logbook page from J/Psi particle discovery experiment.) (Pictured: Burton Richter at SLAC in 1976)

Richard E. Taylor (SLAC), Jerome I. Friedman (MIT), and Henry W. Kendall (MIT) shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their 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." (Pictured: Richard Taylor at left, Group at Nobel Ceremony in Stockholm in 1990, with Friedman, Kendall and Taylor in front row)

Martin L. Perl won the 1995 Nobel Prize "for the discovery of the tau lepton." (Logbook page from the tau lepton discovery experiment.) (Pictured: Perl in 1996)

Roger Kornberg won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription" (determining how DNA's genetic blueprint is read and used to direct the process of protein manufacture). A significant portion of his research was carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL). (Pictured: April 2001 issue of Science with RNA polymerase on the cover.)

Yoichiro Nambu (Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL) Makoto Kobayashi (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan) and Toshihide Maskawa (Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, Japan) share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of broken symmetries detected -- exactly as previously predicted by the Nobel laureates -- at both Babar (SLAC) and at Belle (KEK) in 2001. (Pictured: From left David Hitlin (Caltech), Toshihide Maskawa (Kyoto U.), Makoto Kobayashi (KEK), and Jonathan Dorfan (Stanford U./SLAC))

Ada Yonath shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry ""for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome," landmark work that had some of its early foundation in studies at SSRL.

The SSRL SPEAR Storage Ring has been the site of the discoveries which led to the award of the 1976 and 1995 prizes in physics, and of the 2006 and 2009 prizes in chemistry.

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