A Symposium on the Nature of Science Fermilab's Wilson Hall Saturday, March 18, 2000 8:15 AM to 4:00 PM

REFLECTIONS

Leon M. Lederman

What is science? What are the ingredients that go into science? Let's make a list: skepticism, openness, rationality, appeals to observation and experiments—testing and falsification. Science, a rational system for understanding the world, is so beautiful. It has had magnificent successes. If you look at it through these criteria, science gives a beautiful picture of the world.

Leon M. Lederman, internationally renowned high-energy physicist, is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois and holds an appointment as Pritzker Professor of Science at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Dr. Lederman served as Chairman of the State of Illinois Governor's Science Advisory Committee. He is a founder of and Resident Scholar at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a three-year residential public high school for the gifted. Dr. Lederman was the Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from June 1, 1979 to June 30, 1989. He is a founder and Chairman of the Teachers Academy for Mathematics and Science, active in the professional development of primary school teachers in Chicago. In 1990 he was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest scientific organization in the U.S. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science (1965), the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1976), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), the Nobel Prize in Physics (1988) and the Enrico Fermi Prize given by President Clinton in 1993. He served as a founding member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel of the United States Department of Energy and the International Committee for Future Accelerators. Lederman chairs the Committee on Capacity Building in Science of the Paris-based International Council of Scientific Unions.

Web Maintainer: ed-webmaster@fnal.gov
Last Update: March 2, 2000
/symposium/lederman.html