Goldhaber, Maurice

Goldhaber, Maurice

(1911– ) physicist; born in Lemberg, Austria. As a fellow at Cambridge, he discovered the nuclear photodisintegration effect with collaborator James Chadwick (1934). He came to the U.S.A. to join the University of Illinois (1938–50), where he and his wife, Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber, demonstrated the identity of beta rays with electrons. At Brookhaven National Laboratory, Goldhaber continued to make major contributions to studies of elementary particles.