Melvin Schwartz was born on November 2, 1932 in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He received a B.A. in 1953 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1958 from Columbia University. After working at Brookhaven National Laboratory as a research scientist from 1956 to 1958, he joined the faculty of Columbia in 1958 as an assistant professor of physics. He became an associate professor in 1960 and was appointed as a full professor in 1963.
Dr. Schwartz left Columbia in 1966 to accept an appointment as professor of physics at Stanford University. During this time he founded Digital Pathways, Inc, a California-based network management and security vendor. He left Stanford in 1983 to work full time to Digital Pathways, which evolved in the 1980s into a company that specialized in communications gear and manufacturing the SLC-2, the network management box that gave birth to the defender line of multiline security products monitoring network access.
In 1988, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Columbia professors Leon Lederman and Jack Steinberger for their discovery of the Muon type neutrino. Dr. Schwartz left Digital Pathways in 1991 to return to Columbia as a professor of physics. He received an honorary degree from the University that same year. He also returned to Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1991 as its associate director for high energy and nuclear physics, and he supervised experiments in which gold atoms are accelerated to near the velocity of light and stripped of all electrons. Dr. Schwartz became the I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics at Columbia in 1994. In 1995, Columbia presented Dr. Schwartz with its highest honor, the Alexander Hamilton Medal. Dr. Schwartz retired in 2000. He is married to the former Marilyn Fenster and has three children: David, Diane, and Betty.
Published: Aug 30, 2006
Last modified:
Aug 31, 2006
