Gerson Goldhaber dies at 86; particle physicist discovered 'dark energy'

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The UC Berkeley scientist played a key role in identifying the antiproton, psi and charm particles, and later helped show that the universe is expanding.


Physicist Gerson Goldhaber conducted research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for more than five decades, contributing to key discoveries about the fundamental particles of nature. (Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / August 8, 2010)


By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
August 8, 2010


Gerson Goldhaber, a UC Berkeley physicist who played a key role in identifying some of the fundamental particles of nature, then switched careers and helped show that the universe is expanding rather than contracting, died of natural causes at his home in Berkeley on July 19. He was 86.

Goldhaber "was a great physicist and a wonderful human being," said George Trilling, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley who worked with him. "The number of observations that he was responsible for was remarkable."

He "had an unerring sense of where great discoveries were to be made, from the antiproton to the psi and charm particles, and finally to dark energy," longtime colleague Robert Cahn of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said in a statement. He had "a special talent for turning abstractions into something for which he could have an intuitive sense," said Cahn, who co-wrote with Goldhaber "The Experimental Foundations of Particle Physics."

As a part of a team led by Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, Goldhaber played a key role in the discovery of the antiproton, the nuclear particle with the same mass as the proton but the opposite charge. Antimatter versions of all the other particles had been observed, but the antiproton remained elusive and some researchers doubted its existence. Even Goldhaber's brother Maurice, also a physicist, bet a colleague $500 that it would not be found.

Goldhaber and his then-wife, nuclear chemist/physicist Sulamith Low Goldhaber, developed a photographic emulsion detector that played a key role in the 1955 discovery of the particle. Segre and Chamberlain received the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics for the feat. Some experts said they finally accepted the existence of the particle because Maurice paid up after losing the bet.
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