Richter, Burton (1931- )

US particle physicist. In the 1960s he designed the Stanford Positron-Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR), a machine designed to collide positrons and electrons at high energies. In 1974 Richter and his team used SPEAR to produce a new subatomic particle, the ψ meson. This was the first example of a particle formed from a charmed quark, the quark whose existence had been postulated by Sheldon Glashow ten years earlier. Richter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1976 for his discovery of the ψ meson. He shared the award with Samuel Ting, who had discovered the particle independently. Richter was director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) 1984-99.