Homer Alfred Neal (June 13, 1942 – May 23, 2018[1]) was an American particle physicist and a distinguished professor at the University of Michigan.

[5] Neal's research group works as part of the ATLAS experiment hosted at CERN in Geneva.

[4] Neal grew up an African-American[6] in highly segregated Franklin, Kentucky, and was forced by his neighbors there to break off relations with a white friend with whom he had bonded over a shared interest in ham radio.

The Neal Laboratory is the first academic building on Central Campus to be named after a Black member of the UM community.

He was an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences[14] In 2013, Neal was elected to be the vice-president of the American Physical Society, an association representing over 51,000 physicists in academia, national labs, and industry in the United States and worldwide.

The sessions focused on Neal's experiments at Brookhaven, Argonne, SLAC, Fermilab, and CERN, as well as his contributions to the US government as a member of the National Science Board, and to the Smithsonian Institution as a regent.