‘God Particle’ Physicist Sells His Nobel Prize at Auction
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
The 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics won by American experimental physicist Leon Lederman sold at auction for $765,002.
The online auction conducted by Los Angeles-based Nate D. Sanders Auctions closed on Sunday evening.
Lederman, 92, and his wife, Ellen, decided to sell the medal after he received a diagnosis of dementia, the Associated Press reported.
Ten Nobel Prizes have been sold at auction, with only two of them put up for auction by a living prize winner.
Lederman won the Nobel Prize for Physics with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberge for their discovery of the muon neutrino, a subatomic particle. He also won the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982 and the U.S. National Medal of Science. He is a member of the board of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
He is credited with coining the nickname the “God particle” for the Higgs Boson subatomic particle, a term which he used in a 1993 book promoting support for the Superconducting Super Collider.
Lederman used his prize money to buy a vacation home in Driggs, Idaho, where he now lives permanently, according to the AP.
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