Suppression of Hadrons with Large Transverse Momentum in Central<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi><mml:mi>u</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>A</mml:mi><mml:mi>u</mml:mi></mml:math>Collisions at<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msqrt><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>NN</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:msqrt><mml:mspace/><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mspace/><mml:mn>130</mml:mn><mml:mn/><mml:mi/><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi></mml:math>

Transverse momentum spectra for charged hadrons and for neutral pions in the range 1 GeV/c<p(T)<5 GeV/c have been measured by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC in Au+Au collisions at root square[s(NN)] = 130 GeV. At high p(T) the spectra from peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with scaling the spectra from p+p collisions by the average number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. The spectra from central collisions are significantly suppressed when compared to the binary-scaled p+p expectation, and also when compared to similarly binary-scaled peripheral collisions, indicating a novel nuclear-medium effect in central nuclear collisions at RHIC energies.