Jack Steinberger

Jack Steinberger in 2008

Jack Steinberger (born Hans Jakob Steinberger; May 25, 1921 - December 12, 2020) was a German-born American physicist noted for his work with neutrinos, the subatomic particles considered to be elementary constituents of matter. He was a recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, for the discovery of the muon neutrino. Through his career as an experimental particle physicist, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University (1950–68), and the CERN (1968–86). He was also a recipient of the United States National Medal of Science in 1988, and the Matteucci Medal from the Italian Academy of Sciences in 1990.

Quotes

• You only have one life. Whatever crops up, crops up.
  • Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger, at the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, July 2008. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org.
• The pretention that some of us are better than others, I don't think is a very good thing. And who is contributing what to our progress in science is not so obvious and many who don't get that Nobel Prize are better than people than some of us that do get the Nobel Prize. … I think we should not be interested in prizes, we should be interested in learning about nature.
  • Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger, at the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, July 2008.
• The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.
  • Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger, at the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, July 2008.