Herman Brenner White

Herman Brenner White (born 28 September 1948) is an American physicist who works at Fermilab. He won the 2010 American Physical Society Edward A Bouchet Award and became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2025.

Early life and education White was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His mother, Susie Mae Fort White, worked at John Andrew Hospital and his father, Herman Brenner White Senior, served in the military. He saw his role in the civil rights movement as being an exceptional student who could prove that black people deserved equal access to education. White was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship to study at CERN, and also worked as a research associate at Argonne National Laboratory.

Research and career White held various roles at Fermilab since joining in 1974. In 1976 he joined Yale University as a research fellow. He joined Florida State University for his doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 1991. He also worked on the neutrino oscillation experiment (E701) and SciBooNE. He studies neutrino cross-sections and muon conversion. In 2006 his life story was recorded by the HistoryMakers of Chicago as part of the oral history archives. In 2010 White was awarded the American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for his work on the Tevatron experiment and outstanding public service. He serves on the advisory board for QuarkNet, National Society of Black Physicists and the Illinois Institute of Technology. He served on the advisory panel for the United States Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. In 2017 he appeared in a series of online videos for Science the Day!. He took part in The Story Collider in Batavia, Illinois in 2018. In 2025, he became a fellow of the American Physical Society "For inspiring leadership and advocacy for physics, science education, and communication with policy makers, governments and the public, and for outstanding contributions to several areas of high energy physics."