Lee Grodzins

Lee Grodzins (July 10, 1926 – March 6, 2025) was an American physicist and inventor who was a longtime professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After work as a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Grodzins joined the faculty of MIT, where he taught physics for nearly four decades. He is known for his participation in the 1957 experiment that measured the helicity of the neutrino. He was also head of research and development for Niton Corporation, which developed devices to detect dangerous contaminants and contraband. He wrote more than 170 technical papers and held more than 60 US patents. The family settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, He began his career with General Electric as an assistant in the nuclear physics group at their research laboratory in Schenectady, New York, his thesis was titled "A Cloud Chamber Study of the Single Scattering of 2.5 MeV Positrons by Gold Nuclei". He taught for a year afterwards at Purdue.

Career and research

From 1955 to 1958, Grodzins was a researcher with the nuclear physics group at Brookhaven National Laboratory, probing the properties of the nuclei of atoms. In 1956 he married a biologist whom he met at Brookhaven, Lulu (1929–2019). The same year, together with Maurice Goldhaber and , Grodzins performed the Goldhaber experiment, which determined that neutrinos have negative helicity. This work was important in our understanding of the weak interaction. There he also developed handheld devices that use X-ray fluorescence to determine the composition of metal alloys and to detect other materials. His sister Ethel Grodzins Romm was the president and CEO of Niton, Grodzins also developed devices to detect explosives, drugs and other contraband in luggage and cargo containers.

Grodzins wrote more than 170 technical papers and held more than 60 US patents. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1964–65 and in 1971–72, and a Senior Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in 1980–81.

Personal life and death His sister Anne Grodzins Lipow was a librarian and library science expert, and his sister Ethel was an author, project manager, CEO and co-chair of the Lyceum Society of the New York Academy of Sciences. His nephew is climate writer Joseph Romm.

Grodzins was married to Anderson for 62 years until her death in 2019; the couple had two sons. Grodzins died in Weston, Massachusetts, on March 6, 2025, at the age of 98.