Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

92-year-old physicist, retired in Idaho, decides to auction off his Nobel Prize medal

Here’s a news item from the Associated Press: BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A retired Chicago physicist has put his 1988 Nobel Prize up for auction. The minimum bid for Leon Lederman's medal is $325,000. The 92-year-old says it's been sitting on a shelf for decades and selling it seemed like a logical thing to do. The online auction being conducted by Nate D. Sanders Auctions closes Thursday evening but only when the final bid has stood unchallenged for half an hour. Lederman won the Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists for discovering a subatomic particle called the muon neutrino. He used the prize money to buy a cabin near the tiny town of Driggs in eastern Idaho as a vacation retreat. Lederman retired from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, in June 2012 and moved to Idaho full time.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

Follow Betsy online: