Quick Facts
Biography
Nicholas P. Samios (born on March 15, 1932) is an American physicist and former director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. He majored in physics at Columbia College of Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1953; he earned his PhD. at Columbia in 1957. He worked on the Columbia faculty for three years before joining Brookhaven's physics department. He was appointed laboratory director in May 1982. He stepped down in 1997.
Samios has specialized in the physics of high-energy particles. He is especially known for his study of elementary particles, in particular for the discovery of the Omega minus particle as postulated by Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman, as well as the first charmed baryon. These discoveries have contributed to the understanding of the spectrum of particles and have carried to the formulation of the Standard Model of particle physics.
Awards
- 1980 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award
- 1993 Panofsky Prize