Vera Lüth

Vera G. Lüth (born 1943) is an experimental particle physicist and professor emerita at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford University, in the United States. A senator of the Helmholtz Association, she has worked in particle physics at SLAC since 1974. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Early life and education Lüth completed her undergraduate education at Mainz University Institute of Physics from 1963 to 1966. In 1969 she completed a Master of Science in physics at Heidelberg University; her Dr. rer. nat. work in particle physics was also completed there from 1966 to 1974, based on research at CERN. Her 1974 dissertation, titled Measurement of the Charge Asymmetry in the Decay K0 --> pi+- e-+ Neutrino as a Function of the K0 Decay Time,

In 1977 she married Karl L. Brown (1925–2002) in Santa Clara County, California.

Career Lüth was hired at SLAC as a postdoctoral researcher from 1974 to 1984. When construction of the SSC was cancelled, she returned to SLAC as the first technical coordinator for the BaBar detector, with responsibilities for overseeing the detector's design and construction. Upon its completion, she turned her efforts to measuring decay of B mesons. According to Kelen Tuttle, writing for SLAC Today, "Lüth was one of the leading physicists on both the magnetic detector built by SLAC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the MARK II detector, which recorded data at SPEAR, the Positron Electron Project and the Stanford Linear Collider. Lüth was also the driving force to build the first detector using silicon microstrips at a colliding beam machine."

In addition to co-authoring more than 700 publications on particle physics,

Honors Lüth was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1984, and cited "For Contributions to the discovery of new particles and to the determination of their properties."

She was honored as professor emerita at SLAC in 2010.