Leon Lederman, 96, Explorer (and Explainer) of the Subatomic World, Dies

Leon Lederman, 96, Explorer (and Explainer) of the Subatomic World, Dies

By then Dr. Lederman had retired from Fermilab to become a professor of physics at the University of Chicago. He also continued to promote science education. In 1992 he served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He and his wife, Ellen, moved to their place in Idaho, in Driggs, just before his 90th birthday. Found to have senile dementia, he was advised by his doctors to live in peaceful surroundings. In 2015 the couple agreed to let an online auction company sell his Nobel Prize medal. The proceeds, $765,002 before taxes, were set aside for future medical expenses.

By then he had forgotten his years as director of Fermilab, or what he had done to win the prize.

“I don’t have any real stories to tell about it,” he told The Associated Press in 2015. “I sit on my deck and look at the mountains.”

Dr. Lederman’s first wife, Florence Gordon Lederman, died in 1990. He married Ellen Carr in 1981. In addition to her, he is survived by three children from his first marriage: two daughters, Rena Lederman, a professor of anthropology at Princeton, and Rachel Lederman, a civil rights lawyer; and a son, Jess, a writer and the creator of a website devoted to the works of the Scottish novelist, poet and minister George MacDonald, as well as five grandchildren.

“There’s always a place at the edge of our knowledge, where what’s beyond is unimaginable, and that edge, of course, moves,” Dr. Lederman told The Times in 1998.

In the beginning were the laws of physics. But where did the laws come from? At that point, he said, “You’re stuck.”

“I usually say, ‘Go across the street to the theology school, and ask those guys, because I don’t know.’ ”

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