Lincoln Wolfenstein is a particle physicist who studies the weak interaction of nuclei. He was born in 1923 and he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University for over 60 years. He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago between 1943 and 1949. His PhD thesis was titled "Theory of Proposed Reactions Involving Polarized Protons." While still a student in 1946, he worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as a physicist. Two years later, just before completing his degree, Wolfenstein became a professor of physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT), now Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Between 1964 and 1965, he was honored as a National Science Foundation senior fellow at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). In 1978, he became university professor of physics at CMU, a position he held until through 1999. In 2000, Wolfenstein retired but remain on campus as a professor emeritus until 2014.