Lee Grodzins (born July 10, 1926) is an American professor emeritus of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[1] After work as a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Grodzins joined the faculty of MIT, where he taught physics for nearly four decades. He was also head of R&D for Niton Corporation, which developed devices to detect dangerous contaminants and contraband. He wrote more than 150 technical papers and holds more than 60 US patents.[2][3]
Education and early life
Grodzins was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of David Melvin Grodzins and his wife Taube Grodzins, Jewish emigrants, with roots in Poland and Grodno, Belarus.[4] The family settled in Manchester, New Hampshire.[2] He graduated with a BS degree in engineering in 1946 from the University of New Hampshire.[5] He began his career with General Electric as an assistant in the nuclear physics group at their research laboratory in Schenectady, New York.[1] He earned his PhD in physics at Purdue University in 1954 and taught for a year afterwards at Purdue.[6][7]
Career and research
Grodzins in 2007
From 1955 to 1958, Grodzins was a researcher with the nuclear physics group at Brookhaven National Laboratory, probing the properties of the nuclei of atoms. In 1956 he married a biologist whom he met at Brookhaven, Lulu née Anderson (1929– 2019).[2][8] The same year, together with Maurice Goldhaber and Andrew Sunyar [de], Grodzins performed an experiment that determined that neutrinos have negative helicity. This work was important in our understanding of the weak interaction.[6] Grodzins joined the faculty of the physics department of MIT in 1959 and was a professor of physics there from 1966 to 1998. In 1985, he carried out the first computer axial tomographic experiment using synchrotron radiation.[1]
Meanwhile, in 1987, he co-founded and led research and development at Niton Corporation, which developed, manufactured and marketed test kits and instruments to measure radon gas in buildings and toxic elements, such as lead.[6][9] There he also developed handheld devices that use X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition of metal alloys and to detect other materials.[6] In 1998, he left MIT to work full-time directing the R&D group at Niton, and in 2005, he and his family sold Niton.[10] His sister Ethel Grodzins Romm was the President and CEO of Niton,[11] followed by his son Hal.[12] Grodzins also developed devices to detect explosives, drugs and other contraband in luggage and cargo containers.[6] Four of his devices earned R&D 100 awards, given annually by R&D Magazine to the 100 most innovative technical products in the US.[1][13]
Grodzins wrote more than 150 technical papers and holds more than 50 US patents. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1964–65 and in 1971–72, and a Senior Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in 1980–81.[1] He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Purdue University in 1998.[6] He is a founding member of the Union of Concerned Scientists and was its president in 1972.[1] In 1999, he founded Cornerstones of Science, a public library initiative to help children and adults explore science. He serves as its president.[5] MIT named the Lee Grodzins Postdoctoral Fellows Lecture Award for him.[14]
^ abKawasaki, Guy. "Ethel Grodzins Romm" in Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People, Beyond Words Publishing (1994) ISBN0941831957, pp. 11–17
