Goldberger was born in Chicago, Illinois. He went on to receive his B.S. at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1948. His advisor on thesis, Interaction of High-Energy Neutrons with Heavy Nuclei, was Enrico Fermi.[3][4] While serving in the Army shortly after graduation, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he worked under renowned physicist Enrico Fermi from 1943–45.[5]
He was a participant in 1958's Project 137 and the first chairman of JASON. He was involved in nuclear arms control efforts. He also advised a number of major corporations; for example he was on the board of directors of General Motors for 12 years.[14]
Several of his doctoral students were elected Fellows of the American Physical Society: Allan N. Kaufman in 1962, Cyrus D. Cantrell in 1980, and Martin B. Einhorn in 1991.[15] Goldberger died in 2014 in La Jolla, California. His wife Mildred Goldberger, who also worked on the Manhattan Project, had previously died in 2006.[16][17] Upon his death he was survived by two sons and three grandchildren.[2]
Bibliography
Marvin L. Goldberger (1961). Introduction to the theory and applications of dispersion relations. Hermann. (In Relations de dispersion et particules élémentaires: École d'été de physique théorique, Les Houches, 1960)
^ abcWoo, Elaine (November 28, 2014). "Marvin Goldberger dies at 92; physicist served as Caltech president". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 1, 2014. He left Caltech to become director of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Princeton, N.J., think tank that had been home to such luminaries as Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Goldberger held that post from 1987 to 1991, when he moved to UCLA to teach physics. He spent his last years at UC San Diego, where he was dean of the school of natural sciences from 1994 to 1999.
^DePalma, Anthony (June 26, 1991). "For Scholarly Nirvana, Familiar Questions as Leaders Change". The New York Times. Retrieved January 14, 2011. Dr. Goldberger, a former president of the California Institute of Technology, is a wry man who is able, despite his revered office (it belonged to J. Robert Oppenheimer from 1947 to 1966), to poke fun at himself. Given such an independent and strong-willed faculty, he said he sees the director's job as more that of pit crew than of car driver in this intellectual road race.
