Portrait of Martin Lewis Perl

Birthday profile

Martin Lewis Perl

Martin Lewis Perl, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2014)

Born
June 24, 1927
Died
September 30, 2014
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1927

About Martin Lewis Perl

Martin Lewis Perl was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton. Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton. His parents, Fay (née Resenthal), a secretary and bookkeeper, and Oscar Perl, a stationery salesman who founded a printing and advertising company, were Jewish immigrants to the US from the Polish area of Russia. Perl's thesis described measurements of the nuclear quadrupole moment of sodium, using the atomic beam resonance method that Rabi had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for in 1944. The tau was first detected in a series of experiments between 1974 and 1977 by Perl with his colleagues at the SLAC-LBL group.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Martin Lewis Perl timeline

  1. Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton.
  2. Perl's thesis described measurements of the nuclear quadrupole moment of sodium, using the atomic beam resonance method that Rabi had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for in 1944.
  3. The tau was first detected in a series of experiments between 1974 and 1977 by Perl with his colleagues at the SLAC-LBL group.

The world when Martin Lewis Perl was born

Martin Lewis Perl was born in 1927. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1927

  • #1 song"My Blue Heaven" – Gene Austin
  • Top movieThe Jazz Singer (first talking picture)
  • Best-selling bookElmer Gantry – Sinclair Lewis

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBabe Ruth hits 60 home runs
  • Top headlineLindbergh completes first solo transatlantic flight
  • Technology milestoneThe Jazz Singer — first feature-length talking film
  • Defining fadDance marathons peak
  • Notable inventionPEZ candy dispensers
  • World population2.04 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population119.0M

1927 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Martin Lewis Perl's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19272026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$6,100$435,000
Average income$3,700$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population119.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.