Over the years, SPS, through the auspices of the physics department, has hosted speakers of international renown. Among these are several nobel laureates:
Dr. Eugene P. Wigner (Princeton) – shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles; ’75, ’79, ’83, ’86.
Dr. Rudolph Peierls (Oxford) – pioneer in quantum mechanics and theoretical nuclear physics; ’82.
Dr. Leon M. Lederman (Fermi Lab) – shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the neutrino beam method and demonstration of the doublet structure of leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino; ’90.
Dr. Yuval Ne’eman (Univ. of Tel Aviv and Univ. of Texas) – transformative contributions to elementary particle theory; ’98.
Dr. Norman F. Ramsey (Harvard) – shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks; ’95, ’02.
Dr. William D. Phillips (NIST) – shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light; ’01, ’02, ’06.