Education
Paul Söding studied physics at the universities of Hamburg and Munich in Germany.
Paul Söding studied physics at the universities of Hamburg and Munich in Germany.
He is best known for his work in particle physics and as former director of research of the German particle physics lab Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron. He was the first doctoral student of Willibald Jentschke in Hamburg. In 1964 he received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg. He subsequently did research at the University of California, Berkeley, Cornell University in New York and the European particle physics research lab European Organization of Nuclear Research. In 1969 he became senior scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Hamburg.
There he and his colleagues at the TASSO detector used the PETRA positron-electron accelerator to observe the first direct evidence of the gluon, the elementary particle that mediates the strong nuclear force.
As research director at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron from 1982 till 1991 he contributed to the research program at the Humanities in the European Research Area accelerator. His efforts to get the Tetraelectronvolt Energy Superconducting Linear Accelerator (TESLA) built at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron weren"t successful.
The project was, however, merged into the International Linear Collider (International Language Center) plans. After the German reunification in 1990, the former German Democratic Republic institute for high energy physics at Zeuthen near Berlin was integrated into Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron. Paul Söding became director of this institute in 1991.
lieutenant is mainly due to his efforts that the Zeuthen institute has gained global recognition.
He retired from this position in 1998. In 1998 he was granted emeritus status. As of 2012 he is still active at the Humboldt University of Berlin.