U.S. Jewish Physicist Leads in Creation of First Nucleus of Anti-matter

The creation of the first atomic nucleus of anti-matter corresponding to the heretofore theoretical opposite image of the nucleus of deuterium or heavy hydrogen has been produced by a team of five Columbia University scientists, headed by Dr. Leon Lederman, a prominent Jewish physicist and professor of physics at the university.

The discovery, which was carried out at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, is considered a major advance in a theory first put forward by Dr. Maurice Goldhaber, director of the laboratory, who proposed the existence of large masses of antimatter in the universe, composed of particles of atoms that are the opposites of those making up all the known elements. Earlier research had produced a positron, the antimatter equivalent of the electron, and similar anti-matter particles corresponding to protons and neutrons.