Doctoral advisor Gary Feldman Role Experimenter | Name Melissa Franklin Doctoral students David Kestenbaum | |
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Institutions Fermilab
Harvard University Alma mater University of Toronto
Stanford University Thesis Selected studies of charmonium decay (1982) Education Stanford University, University of Toronto | ||
Big think interview with melissa franklin
Melissa Eve Bronwen Franklin (born 1956) is an experimental particle physicist and the Department Chair and Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University. While working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago, her team found some of the first evidence for the existence of the top quark. In 1993, Franklin elected a fellow of the American Society of Physics. As of 2010, she is researching proton-antiproton collisions.
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Early life and education
Franklin grew up in Toronto, Canada. She dropped out of high school to form an alternative school with friends. After attending SEED Alternative School she studied physics at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1977.
Career
Franklin earned her physics PhD from Stanford University in 1982 with thesis titled "Selected studies of charmonium decay" under the supervision of Gary Feldman, working with the school's linear accelerator, SLAC. She did postdoctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley in the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. In 1988 she became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and worked at Fermilab in Chicago. In 1987 she joined Harvard University, later becoming the physics department's first tenured woman professor. For over a decade, Franklin traveled between Boston and Chicago every few weeks, to check on and fix equipment at Fermilab. In 1995, her team proved the existence of the top quark.