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Dr.
Homer Neal is a particle physicist who has helped discover of some of the
tiniest particles we know—hyperons and bosons and quarks—smaller than atoms!
Dr. Neal went to college in Indiana
and Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1966 from the University of
Michigan and became a professor there. He
grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in Franklin, Kentucky, a place he described as
“highly segregated,” with separate schools and separate waiting rooms in the
doctor’s office for white and black patients. Neal’s hobby during the 1950s was
“ham” radio, and he became close friends with another ham operator in his town,
who was white. But, leaders in the town disapproved of their relationship
because they wanted to keep black and
white people separate. “We
were both astounded and agreed to stop our communications,” Neal said. “But it
did teach me that basically when individuals are working on a scientific
project together, the color of one’s skin doesn’t matter.”
Dr.
Neal currently does his research at
CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, where his team is part of
the ATLAS experiment. He also co-authored
Beyond
Sputnik: U.S. Science Policy in the 21st Century.
This January, he became the
president of the American Physical Society.
Learn more:
https://www.lsa.umich.edu/physics/directory/faculty/ci.nealhomer_ci.detail
(Adapted from APS News)
This is a diagram from the ATLAS
experiment at CERN. ATLAS scientists use a very complex, very powerful, and
very big machine to do experiments that might reveal more about the tiniest
building blocks of nature. When ATLAS is operating, up to
600 million protons collide every second inside
it!
Learn more: http://www.atlas.ch/
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