Martin Perl | Physicist, 87

Martin Perl, 87, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Stanford University who discovered a subatomic particle known as the tau lepton, has died.

The university said the retired professor, one of two American scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1995, died at Stanford Hospital on Tuesday.

He was recognized for work he did during the 1970s at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a federally funded laboratory where scientists investigate the tiniest pieces of nature.

At the time Mr. Perl discovered the tau lepton, many physicists doubted the particle that would turn out to be a heavyweight cousin of the electron existed. He eventually proved them wrong using a new kind of accelerator in which electrons and positrons course in opposite directions and collide.

Born in New York to Polish-immigrant parents in 1927, Perl earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University while studying under Nobel-winning physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi. - AP