Leonard Isaac Schiff was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on March 29, 1915[1] and died on January 21, 1971, in Stanford, California.
(working under L. H. Thomas) from Ohio State University and his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1937 under Philip M. Morse with thesis Theory of the Collision of Light Elements.
[7] In 1948, Schiff became one of the initial directors of Varian Associates who provided technical support to the company, along with Edward Ginzton, William Hansen, and Marvin Chodorow.
[8] In 1959 and 1960 Schiff and fellow physicist George Pugh wrote papers which advocated using orbiting gyroscopes to test general relativity.
Schiff teamed with fellow Stanford faculty Bob Cannon and Bill Fairbank to conduct research that provided part of the foundation for the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) to test Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.