Fan to Leon: Please sign my Higgs boson
Photo courtesy of Annie Callicotte
Who would you drive 10½ hours to see? The Grateful Dead? The Dalai Lama?
What about an old, friendly guy who reads a lot and is really good at physics?
Annie Callicotte, a student at the University of Central Missouri, chose the third option: Leon Lederman.
"Why? Because I think he’s a wonderful man," she says. "I read his book, The God Particle. That is why I went into science."
The trip to see Lederman, a 1988 Nobel Prize winner in physics and former director of Fermilab, was an anniversary present from her boyfriend, Jeff Thomas, who did the driving and manned the camera. Thomas had given her a copy of Lederman’s book after getting the particle physics bug himself.
Now Callicotte is leaning toward working on the experimental side of particle physics and has a keen interest in the search for the Higgs boson, aka "The God Particle." In fact, she brought a stuffed plushie version of the Higgs boson for Lederman to autograph at a fundraiser in Aurora, Ill., for the SciTech Hands On Museum, which he helped develop.
Callicotte was beside herself to realize she was also standing in the same room as former Fermilab Director John Peoples, current Director Pier Oddone and several of the accelerator operators who are helping with the Tevatron collider’s hunt for the Higgs.
"This is just amazing," she said, beaming, and headed off to shake another hand.
Tona Kunz
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