Melvin Schwartz papers, 1950-2009

Melvin Schwartz was a prominent physicist and life-long Columbian. Schwartz won the Nobel Prize in Physics with his Columbia colleagues Jack Steinberger and Leon Lederman (GSAS 1951).

Born in New York City on November 2, 1932, Schwartz attended the Bronx High School of Science before attending Columbia College to study physics. After receiving his B.A., he stayed at Columbia to pursue graduate studies and in 1958 earned a Ph.D. in physics from GSAS. In 1991, he was awarded an honorary Sc.D. by the University.

Schwartz was research scientist at Brookhaven from 1956-1958. In 1958, he became an assistant professor at Columbia, in 1960 an associate professor and in 1963 a full professor. Three years later, Schwartz left Columbia to become a physics professor at Stanford. While California, in 1970, he founded Digital Pathways, a company that made equipment that allowed people to log onto computer networks securely from outside locations, and was its president and CEO.

In 1983, Schwartz left Stanford to work fulltime at Digital Pathways, but in 1991 was persuaded to return to physics by Nicholas Samios (GSAS M.A. 1953, Ph.D. 1957), who was then director of Brookhaven. Returning to New York, Schwartz became associate director of high energy and nuclear physics at Brookhaven, where he oversaw the building of four detectors at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, known as RHIC at Brookhaven. He also returned to teaching at Columbia and in 1994 was appointed I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics.

Schwartz was active in College alumni affairs; he served on the College Board of Visitors from 1989-1992, on the College Alumni Association Board of Directors from 1991-94 and funded the Alumni Host program. He was honored with a John Jay Award for professional achievement in 1989 and the Alexander Hamilton Medal in 1995. Schwartz retired in 2000 and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society.