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Portrait of Jerome I. Friedman
Photo: Betsythedevine, Own work · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physics · 1990

Jerome I. Friedman

He helped find the first direct evidence of quarks, showing that the protons and neutrons in every atom are built from smaller parts.

The Nobel citation: “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics”
Born
March 28, 1930, Chicago, IL, USA
Shared with
Henry W. Kendall, Richard E. Taylor
Affiliation at the time
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

Physics prize

1990

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

60years

Born in 1930.

Sources cited

24

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • He turned down an art-school scholarship to study physics after a short book on relativity by Einstein caught his imagination in high school.
  • His mother reached America in 1914 on one of the Lusitania's last voyages. She came from Motol, the Belarusian shtetl where Israel's first president was born.
  • As data piled up, the scattering his team measured climbed to about 1,000 times his own advance estimate, a clue that something tiny and hard sat inside the proton.
  • In 1968 a group vote barred him from mentioning possible point-like particles inside the proton when he presented the first results at a conference in Vienna.
  • In a 2001 lecture he noted that the quarks and electrons in a 150-pound person weigh only about 3 pounds; the rest of our weight comes from energy.

The breakthrough

Deep inelastic scattering: the first direct evidence of quarks (1967-1973)

By the 1960s physicists knew that the proton, the positive particle in every atomic nucleus, has a size, and most pictured it as a soft, fuzzy ball. In 1964 Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig proposed that protons are made of smaller particles called quarks, but searches found none, and many physicists treated quarks as a handy mathematical trick. From 1967 a team from MIT and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), in which Friedman, Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor were leading figures, fired electrons with energies of up to about 20 billion electron volts from SLAC's new two-mile accelerator into liquid hydrogen and deuterium and measured how they scattered. Picture firing BBs into what everyone assumed was a bag of pudding and seeing some ricochet sharply, as if off pebbles inside. In collisions that shattered the proton, electrons flew off at large angles far more often than expected, at the highest momentum transfers 10 to 100 times more. The data also followed a simple pattern, called scaling, that theorist James Bjorken had predicted. Richard Feynman explained why: the electrons were striking tiny point-like parts inside the proton. Over the next few years the team showed those parts have the spin quarks should have, and comparisons with neutrino experiments at CERN showed they carry the fractional electric charges of quarks. The data also suggested that about half of the proton's momentum is carried by neutral particles, soon identified as gluons, the glue of the strong force.[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[10],[11],[12]

“I would have been happy had the Nobel Prize been for the group rather than three of us”
Jerome I. Friedman, From a 2020 oral history interview with the American Institute of Physics, explaining that the SLAC-MIT discovery was the work of a whole team, including graduate students.[6]

What it meant for humanity

Friedman's work changed what we know about the stuff everything is made of, not how we live day to day. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted that more than 99 percent of all matter on Earth, including our bodies, consists of quarks and the gluons that bind them. Before the SLAC-MIT experiments, quarks were widely doubted. Once neutrino results confirmed their charges, and a new theory of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics, explained why quarks never appear alone, the quark picture became the accepted view of protons and neutrons and one of the foundations of the Standard Model of particle physics. In a 2001 lecture Friedman spelled out a startling consequence: the quarks and electrons in a person weigh only a small fraction of the body, and most of our mass comes from the energy of quarks in motion and of the fields that hold them together. The method his team pioneered was carried to higher energies with muon and neutrino beams at Fermilab and CERN. His own group moved on to Fermilab, where neutrino experiments in the early 1980s confirmed predictions of the Standard Model. He also shaped institutions. He directed MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science and then headed its physics department, with close to 80 faculty members. After the prize he used his standing for science: he lobbied 25 senators to keep the Superconducting Super Collider alive, and he joined other physics laureates in 2008 urging emergency funding for basic research. From 2001 he helped plan the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, an international university in Japan that opened in 2011. Throughout, he has insisted that the credit belongs to the whole team, not just the three laureates.

  • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' 1990 press release notes that more than 99 percent of all matter on Earth, including human bodies, consists of quarks and the gluons that bind them.[3],[5]
  • In a 2001 MIT lecture he noted that the quarks and electrons in a 150-pound person weigh about 3 pounds; the rest of our mass comes from the energy of moving quarks and of the fields binding them.[7]
  • The two 1969 Physical Review Letters papers reporting the SLAC-MIT results have each been cited more than 1,300 times, according to the INSPIRE particle physics database.[11],[12]
  • In the early 1980s his MIT group helped build a large neutrino detector at Fermilab; its measurements of weak neutral currents confirmed predictions of the Standard Model.[1]
  • When the Superconducting Super Collider was in political trouble he spoke to 25 senators before a Senate vote, and in 2008 he joined other physics laureates in urging emergency funding for basic research.[6],[24]
  • From 2001 he helped plan the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, which opened in 2011, teaches in English and, he says, draws at least half its faculty and students from outside Japan.[6],[14]

Impact in numbers

We make no numerical claims for Friedman. His prize-winning work was a discovery about nature: it gave the first direct evidence that protons and neutrons are made of quarks, and together with quantum chromodynamics it became one of the pillars of the Standard Model. No medicine, machine or crop can be traced to quarks closely enough to put an honest number on lives saved or dollars earned, and we record the same zero for Murray Gell-Mann, who proposed quarks. His wider legacy is in people and institutions: the physics department he led at MIT, the students he trained and credited, his lobbying for research funding, and his help founding the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. That influence is real, but it cannot be counted without guesswork.

Fundamental scienceEducation

No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.

The double edge

We found no documented harms or serious controversies tied to Friedman's research or his public life. His public causes have been funding for basic research and international scientific cooperation.

Against the odds

Friedman grew up in the United States and never faced the violence that drove many European Jewish scientists into exile. We found no record of antisemitism aimed at him personally, and it is honest to say so. His family's story, though, begins in the Pale of Settlement, the western region of the Russian Empire where Russian law confined most Jews. His mother came from the shtetl of Motol and his father from Slutsk, a mostly Jewish town in Minsk province. Restrictive decrees and waves of pogroms after 1881 drove a steady stream of Jewish emigration from the Pale. His parents arrived in 1913 and 1914, among more than two and a half million East European Jews who reached America between 1881 and 1924, before laws passed in 1921 and 1924 largely shut that door. Neither had formal schooling before emigrating, and his father became an apprentice at about 11. In Chicago his father repaired and sold sewing machines, and the family went through times of financial difficulty. In the 1930s the radio priest Charles Coughlin spread antisemitic lies to tens of millions of listeners, and elite Eastern colleges had been limiting Jewish enrollment since the 1920s. Friedman went to the University of Chicago on a full scholarship, without which, he wrote, he could not have studied there. The world his father left did not survive: German occupiers began massacring the Jews of Slutsk in 1941 and liquidated its ghetto in 1942; only a few survived.

  • 1913

    Discrimination

    His parents grew up in the Pale of Settlement, where Russian law confined most Jews: his mother in Motol, also the birthplace of Chaim Weizmann, and his father in Slutsk, in Minsk province. Decrees and pogroms after 1881 drove mass emigration; we do not know his parents' own reasons for leaving.[6],[17],[18],[19],[20]

  • —

    Other

    His parents had no formal education and limited means, and the family faced financial difficulties. He could attend the University of Chicago only because it gave him a full scholarship.[1],[6]

  • —

    Discrimination

    In the 1930s the Catholic priest Charles Coughlin used national radio broadcasts that reached tens of millions of Americans to spread false claims that Jews were disloyal and to blame them for communism.[21]

  • —

    Quota

    From the 1920s elite private colleges in the East used devices such as regional balance to hold down Jewish enrollment. Friedman studied in Chicago, and we found no sign that such limits touched him.[22]

  • 1942

    Persecution

    The Jewish community of Slutsk, his father's hometown, was destroyed in the Holocaust: German forces massacred local Jews in 1941 and liquidated the ghetto on 11 November 1942. We found no record of relatives who remained there.[18]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishCulturally Jewish

Friedman's parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire: his mother from the shtetl of Motol and his father from Slutsk, both in today's Belarus. They made a point of speaking only English at home but spoke Yiddish with friends, so he picked some up. His father had abandoned religion; his mother kept a kosher home, and at her wish he went to Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah. He says he lost his religious belief soon afterward but avoids declaring his atheism so as not to offend believers. In 2003 he signed Humanist Manifesto III.[6],[15],[16],[23]

Key dates

  1. 1913

    His father emigrates from the Russian Empire to the United States; his mother arrives in 1914 on one of the last voyages of the Lusitania. They meet in Chicago.[1],[6]

  2. March 28, 1930

    Born in Chicago, the second of two children of Selig and Lillian (née Warsaw) Friedman.[1],[2],[9]

  3. 1950

    After completing the University of Chicago's liberal arts program, enters its physics department, where Enrico Fermi becomes his thesis adviser.[1],[6],[9]

  4. 1956

    Earns his PhD at Chicago. Fermi had died in 1954, so John Marshall signs the thesis.[1]

  5. 1957

    With Valentine Telegdi publishes one of the first observations of parity violation in the pion-muon-electron decay chain, then joins Robert Hofstadter's group at Stanford.[1],[13]

  6. 1960

    Joins the MIT physics faculty. Henry Kendall joins his group in 1961, beginning a long partnership.[1]

  7. 1963

    With Kendall, Richard Taylor and others begins planning electron-scattering experiments for SLAC's 20 GeV electron accelerator, then under construction.[1]

  8. 1967

    The SLAC-MIT group starts measuring inelastic electron-proton scattering and finds far more large-angle scattering than expected.[1],[3],[4]

  9. 1968

    Presents the first results at a major physics conference in Vienna; a group vote keeps him from suggesting point-like particles inside the proton.[4],[6]

  10. 1969

    The team publishes two papers in Physical Review Letters on highly inelastic electron-proton scattering, the first direct evidence of point-like constituents.[8],[11],[12]

  11. 1980

    Becomes director of MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science, then heads the physics department from 1983 to 1988.[1]

  12. October 17, 1990

    Awarded one-third of the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor, for deep inelastic scattering experiments.[2],[3]

  13. 2016

    Japan awards him the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.[8],[15]

Sources

  1. 1.Jerome I. Friedman - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Les Prix Nobel 1990), 1991
  2. 2.Jerome I. Friedman - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  3. 3.Press release: The 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics (17 October 1990) · NobelPrize.org (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 1990
  4. 4.Deep Inelastic Scattering: Comparisons with the Quark Model (Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1990) · NobelPrize.org, 1990
  5. 5.Award ceremony speech, Nobel Prize in Physics 1990 · NobelPrize.org, 1990
  6. 6.Interview of Jerome I. Friedman by David Zierler on 2020 August 12 (oral history transcript, archived copy) · American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, via Internet Archive, 2020
  7. 7.Friedman explains role of quarks, in Killian talk, by Deborah Halber · MIT News, 2001
  8. 8.Jerome I. Friedman (faculty profile, archived copy) · MIT Department of Physics, via Internet Archive
  9. 9.Prof. Dr. Jerome I. Friedman - CV · Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Mediatheque
  10. 10.The Discovery of Quarks, by Michael Riordan (SLAC-PUB-5724) · Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 1992
  11. 11.High-Energy Inelastic e-p Scattering at 6 Degrees and 10 Degrees (E.D. Bloom et al., Physical Review Letters 23: 930-934), INSPIRE record · INSPIRE-HEP, 1969
  12. 12.Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering (M. Breidenbach et al., Physical Review Letters 23: 935), INSPIRE record · INSPIRE-HEP, 1969
  13. 13.Nuclear Emulsion Evidence for Parity Nonconservation in the Decay Chain pi+ to mu+ to e+ (J.I. Friedman and V.L. Telegdi, Physical Review 106: 1290-1293), INSPIRE record · INSPIRE-HEP, 1957
  14. 14.Jerome I. Friedman (speaker biography), SM@50: The Standard Model at 50 Years · Case Western Reserve University, College of Arts and Sciences
  15. 15.Jerome Isaac Friedman · Wikipedia
  16. 16.Jerome Friedman · Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)
  17. 17.Pale of Settlement (Encyclopaedia Judaica entry) · Encyclopaedia Judaica, via Encyclopedia.com
  18. 18.Slutsk (from the Encyclopaedia Judaica) · Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)
  19. 19.Chaim Weizmann · Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)
  20. 20.A Century of Immigration, 1820-1924 (From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America) · Library of Congress
  21. 21.The Radio Priest: Charles E. Coughlin and American Antisemitism (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  22. 22.How Jewish Quotas Began, by Stephen Steinberg · Commentary, 1971
  23. 23.Humanist Manifesto III: Notable Signers (archived copy) · American Humanist Association, via Internet Archive
  24. 24.A Letter from America's Physics Nobel Laureates to President George W. Bush (6 May 2008) · Fusion Industry Research and Education (FIRE) collection, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, 2008

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 7 corrections made. How we check

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