How ‘Bout a Round of Applause for Electrons

Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, one of the grand old wizards of science, wants a birthday party on a global scale.

Not for himself.

For a tiny item he has never actually seen: the electron.

It has been nearly a century since British physicist J.J. Thomson bombarded a target with high voltage in his lab at Cambridge and released a stream of charged particles. A colleague subsequently named the particles “electrons,” and the world would never be the same.

“The electron is the touchstone of 20th century science,” said Lederman, former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago and winner of a Nobel Prize in 1988 for his research on the inner workings of the atom. The electron, he said as he talked publicly for the first time about his planned celebration, “turned out to be the key to everything.”

Lederman does not think the 100th anniversary of that discovery should pass unnoticed. Textbooks differ on the date of the discovery, some saying 1897 and others 1898, but Lederman believes the latter is correct.

What the world needs to do, he says, is to establish 1998 as the Year of the Electron and set aside a day or a week as a time for international celebrations.

Yeah, great. Just what the world needs. The electron can join everything from baby formula to country music in giving politicians a chance to issue solemn proclamations and letting government workers take the day off.

Lederman could make a good living as a stand-up comic, and it’s not always easy to know when he’s kidding. He admits his current passion may sound a bit whimsical, but he is dead serious. He met last week with the director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and has other meetings scheduled with top scientific organizations around the world.

He said the director appeared “cautiously interested,” and other people “around the table were smiling and nodding,” but he hasn’t taken the idea before the general court of public opinion.

“You’re the first one [outside of science] I’ve talked to about this,” he said.

Why would a man who holds two research positions and lectures on everything from subatomic particles to “physics for poets” take time to pursue such a goal? The reason lies in Lederman’s long-standing obsession: science education. Science literacy among the general public is abominable, he believes, and the electron celebration just might be the vehicle to help change that.

“People would say, ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ ” he said. “ ‘What’s the electron, what does it do, how do you know it’s there? You can’t even see it.’ ”

“Without electrons,” he continued, “we would not have atoms. [The electron] was the key to the structure of matter in the form of atoms, and ultimately the key to understanding all of chemistry, all of physics and some huge fraction of biology.”

It was the discovery of the electron, he said, that ultimately led to the emergence of quantum theory, resulting in such things as computers, transistors and semiconductors.

Lederman believes that nearly every facet of our lives, and especially our national production, is dramatically influenced by our use of technology made possible by the discovery of the electron.

He said he and several colleagues contacted trade associations representing industries ranging from manufacturing to steel mills.

“We tried to find out what fraction of their industry was based on things that required an understanding of quantum theory, of which the transistor is a major element. We located about a sixth of the GNP that way.”

That doesn’t mean loggers and textile workers need to understand quantum theory to do their work--which is fortunate because most physicists admit they don’t really understand it, either, Lederman said. But they use “devices” that would not be possible without quantum theory, which would not be possible without the electron.

A worldwide week of celebration of the discovery of the electron would cause people to think more about it, thus enhancing public understanding of science, Lederman said.