Background
Friedman, Francis Lee was born on September 5, 1918 in New York City. Son of Harry George and Adele (Oppenheimer) Friedman.
Friedman, Francis Lee was born on September 5, 1918 in New York City. Son of Harry George and Adele (Oppenheimer) Friedman.
Graduate Phillips Exeter Academy, 1935. Bachelor of Arts, Harvard, 1939, Master of Arts, 1940. Doctor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute Technology, 1949.
Born in New York City, Friedman received a Bachelor from Harvard in 1939 and an Master of Arts also from Harvard in 1940. In 1941 he was a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin. After working as an assistant physicist at the National Bureau of Standards he joined the joined the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago (a division of the Manhattan Project) in 1942, first as an assistant to Gregory Breit, where he helped in estimating the thickness of the concrete shield surrounding a high-power nuclear reactor.
He was a signatory of the Szilárd petition in July 1945.
Friedman earned a Doctor of Philosophy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949 and became a Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950. There, he researched nuclear physics, theoretical physics, and cosmic ray theory.
During the 1955-1956 academic year, Friedman worked in the Niels Bohr Laboratory at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. With Jerrold Zacharias led the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) with the aim to develop a new curriculum for high school physics.
Friedman was the principal author of the first edition of the PSSC Physics textbook (1960).
Friedman became the director of the Science Teaching Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960. Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was one of his students.
Then, he became a member of the theoretical group led by Eugene Wigner.
Married Betty Anthony, August 27, 1944. Children: Gweneth, Karen, Seth.