Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner and high-energy physicist, will speak at the College of Professional Studies graduation ceremony Saturday.

Lederman, the son of Russian immigrants, was born in New York in 1922. He received a doctorate from Columbia University, where he later taught physics. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public boarding school. He is a major supporter of the “Physics First” movement that would require high school students to learn physics before biology or chemistry.

Lederman won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988 for his work with neutrinos – particles that travel at light speed and lack an electric charge. He is the director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a Department of Energy national laboratory that focuses on high-energy particle physics. His books include “Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe” and “The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?”