Marvin L. Goldberger

Marvin L. “Murph” Goldberger, a prominent physicist with a distinguished career in higher education, served as the Institute for Advanced Study’s sixth Director from 1987 to 1991. During his tenure, Goldberger created positive growth and change through Faculty appointments and campus building projects, including the buildings now known as Simonyi Hall and Wolfensohn Hall, among other initiatives.

Goldberger, born in 1922 in Chicago, earned his B.S. at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University) and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. While serving in the Army shortly after graduation, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he worked under renowned physicist Enrico Fermi from 1943­­–45. Goldberger’s association with the Institute dates back to 1953, while he was on leave from the University of Chicago at Princeton University. He interacted regularly with Institute Director J. Robert Oppenheimer and other physicists at the Institute, where he eventually came as a Member (1966–70,1976­–77) in the School of Natural Sciences. Goldberger helped to guide U.S. science policy in the 1960s, serving on the President’s Science Advisory Committee from 1965–69 and as a consultant to the Department of Defense.