Ex-Fermi director auctions off Nobel Prize medal

Chronicle Media
Former Fermilab director Leon Lederman will part with his Nobel Prize award following a success-ful auction last week. Below, the Nobel Prize presented to Lederman.

Former Fermilab director Leon Lederman will part with his Nobel Prize award following a success-ful auction last week. Below, the Nobel Prize presented to Lederman.

What’s the price to have your very own Nobel Prize medal?

Leon Lederman, the longtime director of Fermilab and former Batavia resident, was willing to part with his for around $325,000.

Instead he’ll get the proceeds from $765,000 that an online auction for the medal drew last week.

Lederman, now 92 and living in Idaho, doesn’t need the money and the medal representing his 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics hasn’t much use these days and is gathering dust.

Nate D. Sanders Auctions handled the process, including bidding that closed last week.

There have only been 10 Nobel Prize medals auctioned in the past, Nate D. Sanders Auctions auction manager Laura Yntema said in a recent news report.

Lederman is arguably one of the most famous and respected folks ever to have lived in Kane County. He’s credited with the original idea of creating Fermilab, was its director and innovator, he founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and also won a Nobel Prize.

Lederman’s experiences are linked with his long-term affiliation with Columbia University and New York City. His early award-winning research in high-energy physics brought him into national science policy circles and in 1963 he proposed the idea that became the National Accelerator Laboratory.

In 1977 Lederman led the team that discovered the bottom quark at Fermilab. The following year he was named director and his administration brought Fermilab into its position of scientific prominence by 1983 with the achievement of the world’s most powerful superconducting accelerator, the Tevatron. In 1988 Lederman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

During his term as director, Lederman emphasized the importance of math and science education as outreach to the neighboring communities. He then initiated the Saturday Morning Physics lectures and subsequently founded the Friends of Fermilab, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and the Teacher’s Academy for Mathematics and Science.

In the AP article, Lederman’s wife, Ellen, joked that there really isn’t much to do with the medal except maybe a coaster.

“It’s really a wonderful thing” she told a reporter recently. “But it’s not really anything we need in our log cabin in Driggs, Idaho.”