Alexander Abashian

Alexander Abashian (11 March 1930 – 12 February 2014) was an American particle physicist. His research interests included properties of electroweak interactions, tests of symmetry principles, searches for new particles, and detector and accelerator facilities development.

Early life and education Alexander Abashian was born on March 11, 1930. His parents were Armenian and immigrated to the United States from Musa Ler and Kessab. Abashian received and a doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1957. He joined the University of Illinois in 1961 as an assistant professor of physics, eventually working his way to full professor by 1966.

Early in his career at UIUC, Abashian conducted experiments on the CP violation of k mesons, which were similar to experiments being conducted at Princeton at the same time by James W. Cronin and Val L. Fitch. Cronin and Fitch went on to receive the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. In 1983, Abashian published a letter to the editor in Physics Today calling attention to his experiments and claiming that Princeton's group underhandedly rushed publication of their results to get out ahead of the Illinois group.

Abashian left UIUC in 1972 to become a program director in elementary particle physics at the National Science Foundation.

Awards and honors

Fellow, American Physical Society (1969) Outstanding Performance and Special Achievement Award, National Science Foundation (1978)

Personal life Abashian married Dorothy VanDeMar on September 7, 1957; they remained married until her death in 2009. The couple raised four children, one of whom died in 1988 at the age of 29. Abashian died on February 12, 2014.