ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Founding Fermilab: Satire, Speculative Simulation and Spontaneous Symmetry in Leon Lederman’s Liminal Laboratory

• In Event: Developments in the History of Particle Physics

English Abstract

Lamenting cosmic creation and the originary unity of particles, Leon Lederman once ventured: “Everywhere matter was the same—beautiful in its elegant, incandescent symmetry.” In this talk, I contend that speculative simulation and satire were a critical component of Leon Lederman’s experimentalist epistemology that fuelled his work on spontaneous symmetry positioning him as a Nobel laureate in physics. He founded Fermilab as an independent industrial unit where his scholarly and socialist, philosophical and pedagogical proclivities would be allowed uninhibited inquiry and expansive application. In my research, I conceptualise speculative simulation as an integrative approach within particle physics where experimentalism is complemented by astrophysical observation and theoretical approaches. In thus doing I argue that simulation in a particle accelerator—such as a Tevatron or Large Hadron Collider—sought to confirm observations about spontaneous symmetry in the universe rather than contest the principal proposition of theoretical physics. There was a rhetorical rift between experimental and theoretical physicists while in praxis there was epistemic entanglement between speculation and simulation in particle physics. Using Lederman’s oral history interviews, conference videos, research papers and books I irradiate Lederman’s enduring experiences as a Jewish scientist born in the Bronx that animated his personality, philosophy and physics enabling him to create within conventions while breaking boundaries. I critically assess how Lederman’s incisive imagination of the Higgs boson as the ‘God Particle’ became his lasting legacy alongside his liminal laboratory.

Author

• Mariam Mariam Sabri, UC Berkeley