Sidney Drell

Sidney David Drell (September 13, 1926 – December 21, 2016) was an American theoretical physicist

Biography Drell's parents immigrated to America from Ukraine

Drell entered Princeton for the summer term in July 1943, and worked with Josef-Maria Jauch in his junior year and completing his senior thesis "Radiating Electrons" with John Archibald Wheeler. He was awarded a masters in physics in 1947 and received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1949. He co-authored the textbooks Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Relativistic Quantum Fields with James Bjorken. He was an expert in the field of nuclear arms control and cofounder of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, now the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He was a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a trustee Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

In early 1970s, Drell (together with Tung-Mow Yan) did theoretical calculations of lepton pair production in hadronic collisions (Drell–Yan process), which became an important way to study the parton structure of hadrons.

He was the father of Persis Drell, former head of SLAC national accelerator lab, former dean of the Stanford University School of Engineering, and (through Fall 2023) provost of Stanford University; Joanna Drell, Professor of History and chair of the Department of History at the University of Richmond; and Daniel Drell, a program officer at the U.S. Department of Energy. Sidney Drell died in December 2016 at his home in Palo Alto, California at the age of 90.

Awards and honors Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1969) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1971) Member of the American Philosophical Society (1987) The 11th Annual Heinz Award in Public Policy Enrico Fermi Award, 2000 National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, 2001 National Medal of Science, 2011 (presented by President Barack Obama on February 1, 2013)