Melvin Schwartz, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for the experimental demonstration that more than one type of neutrino exists, died on 28 August 2006 in Twin Falls, Idaho. Mel distinguished himself as a researcher, professor, administrator, entrepreneur, and devoted family man and had a major influence on all those arenas. He pursued each in his own style—optimistic, creative, passionate, and anti-bureaucratic. His first love, though, was physics, especially novel ideas.
Mel was born to immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York, on 2 November 1932. He graduated in 1949 from the Bronx High School of Science, where he had been exposed to the beauties and excitement of science. He then went to Columbia College, from which he received an AB in physics in 1953.
His entrance into the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1953 was at a most auspicious time. Among the faculty were I. I. Rabi, T. D. Lee, Charles H. Townes, Leon Lederman, Polykarp Kusch, and Jack Steinberger, who became Mel’s thesis adviser; fellow graduate students included Val Fitch and Leon Cooper. The concept of strangeness as a new quantum number for particles had just been introduced, and the bubble chamber invented. Steinberger decided to pursue both those subjects with three new graduate students—Mel, Jack Leitner, and me. Over the next few years, the group elucidated the properties and decay modes of many new elementary particles. Mel received his PhD in 1958; he worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1956 to 1958 and at Columbia from 1958 to 1966.
In 1962 Mel, Lederman, and Steinberger—assisted by the talented younger physicists Dino Goulianos, Nari Mistry, and Gordon Danby—performed the simple and elegant experiment for which they earned their Nobel Prize. Mel was fortunate to be at Columbia in the 1950s and 1960s when it was the center for studying the weak interactions. It was there at the daily coffee hour that he conceived his idea of producing a high-energy neutrino beam from a high-intensity proton accelerator. A high-energy, high-intensity proton beam impinging on a solid target, such as beryllium, produces a huge number of charged pions that quickly decay into a beam of neutrinos. Those neutrinos can then be used in various experiments to explore the nature of the weak interaction. The technique opened up a new field of physics. The first experimental results from this approach demonstrated that at least two types of neutrinos exist—one associated with the electron and one with the muon. The Nobel Prize-winning experiment was performed at Brookhaven’s Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). The detector was a novel 10-ton optical spark chamber in which the neutrinos from pion decays were observed to interact and produce only muons, not electrons.
After several more years at Columbia, Mel decided a change might be beneficial and in 1966 went to Stanford University to teach. He also became a group leader at SLAC and continued to work at Brookhaven, where he pursued a search for π−µ atoms. During the time of the 1974 October revolution, teams at Brookhaven (Samuel C.C. Ting and collaborators) and SLAC (Burton Richter and collaborators) were actively investigating vector mesons. Mel was at Brookhaven and, in his puckish way, became a communications link between the East and West coasts, disclosing preliminary results of the experimental groups. When the J/Ψ was discovered, priority issues were nicely resolved with both Ting and Richter sharing the 1976 Nobel Prize.
Mel spent substantial effort teaching and wrote a textbook on electromag-netism. He enjoyed guiding young students and exposing them to the pleasures of physics, which leads to a story Mel told me several times. It may be apocryphal, but I believe it to be true. Two Stanford students approached him about auditing one of his courses, to which he agreed. They met with him periodically to get his advice on a concept they had developed. Mel told them that their plan had two deficiencies: First, no one is interested in personal computers, and second, the name they chose, “Apple,” wouldn’t fly.
High-energy physics was becoming too theory-driven and bureaucratic, with program advisory committees, large detectors, and large teams, and Mel eventually became disillusioned with it. He left Stanford in 1983 to be an entrepreneur and started Digital Pathways, which provided secure communications to businesses. I believe Mel embarked on the venture not only to challenge himself in a new arena but also for the remote prospect of accumulating sufficient wealth so he could go to any lab and fund any experiment without having to get a committee’s approval. He ultimately sold the successful enterprise.
It was around 1991 that I approached Mel about coming back to Brookhaven. His return was successful for several reasons: Eight years in industrial life was enough for him, and it was time to try something new; the experimental program at Brookhaven’s AGS was well suited to his taste, with relatively small experiments and the opportunity to explore novel ideas; and Brookhaven had started building the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which would greatly benefit from guidance from someone with Mel’s interests and inclinations. He molded both programs, especially RHIC. Mel and his advisory committee rejected the 11 original RHIC proposals and remolded them into 4 unique experiments that resulted in the discovery of the strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma.
At Brookhaven Mel again demonstrated his disdain for bureaucrats. During an annual high-energy physics review by the US Department of Energy, Mel and a high-level official had a heated exchange. In effect, Mel was told that he would have to shut down the AGS program in a few years, which to him sounded unreasonable, and he strongly objected. Words were exchanged, and Mel told the official to go fly a kite, but in more earthy language. High-energy physics at the AGS was closed down in 2003.
After a fruitful tenure as associate director of high-energy and nuclear physics at Brookhaven, Mel returned to Columbia in 1994, where he became the I. I. Rabi Professor of Physics. Columbia honored him with both the John Jay Award and the Alexander Hamilton Medal. He retired in 2000, moving to Ketchum, Idaho, where he spent his final years.
Among Mel’s attributes was his ability to get along with and befriend a large portion of the high-energy community. Amazingly, he was on close terms with a diverse group of strongly opinionated individuals, including Luis Alvarez, Valentine Telegdi, and Martinus Veltman. We have all benefited from having known Mel, and it is refreshing to note that a smile appears on people’s faces when his name is mentioned.
