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Steven Weinberg: Biography from Answers.com

️Wed May 03 1933

Steven Weinberg (born 1933) shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with two other scientists for their work in the field of elementary-particle forces.

Steven Weinberg was born on May 3, 1933, in New York City. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1950; one of his classmates was Sheldon Lee Glashow, with whom Weinberg would share the Nobel Prize in 1979. Weinberg received his B.A. from Cornell (1954) and then for a year went to the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute) in Copenhagen before returning to the United States to complete his Ph.D. at Princeton (1957). Weinberg taught at Columbia University (1957-1959), the University of California at Berkeley (1959-1966), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1969-1973), and Harvard University (1973-1982). In 1982 he became Josey Professor of Science at the University of Texas in Austin, where he remained into the 1990s. He met his wife, Louise, while an undergraduate at Cornell, and they were married in 1954; their only child, Elizabeth, was born in Berkeley in 1963.

Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of his contributions to the unification of elementary-particle forces. "Unification" refers to the process by which scientists succeed in describing apparently disparate phenomena in terms of a few simple principles. Success in unification often goes hand-in-hand with progress in science. Isaac Newton's demonstration in the 17th century that the forces that pull objects to the ground were the same as those that keep the planets in their orbits was an example of unification. Likewise, James Clerk Maxwell's discovery two centuries later that electricity and magnetism are but different manifestations of the same phenomenon, electromagnetism.

When Weinberg entered Princeton as a graduate student in 1955, four fundamental forces (also called interactions) were known: gravitation, electromagnetism, weak forces, and strong forces. The latter three are called elementary-particle forces because they govern the behavior of the subatomic realm. Although periodic attempts had been made to unify them, the efforts had been unsuccessful. Of the three forces, the theory describing electromagnetism was the most elaborately developed and was couched in a mathematical language known as quantum field theory. According to quantum field theory, a force is carried by a type of particle called a vector or "spin-one" boson; the vector boson carrying the electromagnetic force, for instance, is the photon.

In the early 1960s Weinberg began exploring a version of quantum field theory called gauge theory and wondered whether it could also be used to describe the strong force in a manner analogous to the already successful description of the electromagnetic force. But, if written as a gauge theory, the strong force would have to be carried by massive vector bosons while the photon was massless, making the attempt appear hopeless, because in a unified theory the bosons would have to be described symmetrically. Weinberg tried to overcome the apparent discrepancy by utilizing a new type of symmetry principle called broken symmetry. Weinberg was thoroughly familiar with broken symmetry, having exploited it in inventing the successful modern theory of the low-energy interactions of the particles known as hadrons (particles that feel the strong interaction). In the context of gauge theories, however, the application of symmetry breaking generated a new problem, for it seemed to entail the postulation of a kind of particle already known not to exist. Weinberg tried for years to find a loophole in the apparent requirement without success.

"A Model of Leptons"

One day while driving to his Massachusetts Institute of Technology office, he suddenly realized that he had been applying the right idea to the wrong problem. The mathematical apparatus involving broken symmetry that he had been trying to fit to the strong interaction would work when applied to the weak. This involved a major shifting of conceptual gears, for whereas Weinberg's models previously had involved hadrons, they would now have to involve another set of particles called leptons, which only experience the weak and electromagnetic interactions. The result was "A Model of Leptons, " which was published in Physical Review Letters in November 1967. This short paper, only two and a half pages long, crystallized years of effort and represents the work for which Weinberg would receive his Nobel Prize.

"Leptons interact only with photons, and with the intermediate bosons that presumably mediate weak interactions, " the paper began. "What could be more natural than to unite these spin-one bosons into a multiplet of gauge fields?" Weinberg then acknowledged that the attempt would immediately run into the same problem that he had faced in his models of the strong interaction of the mass differences between photons and the vector bosons of the weak interaction. Furthermore, attempts to use broken symmetry to finesse the problem would create unwanted bosons. Weinberg's paper then proposed a solution to the problem involving a spontaneously broken model that avoids the troublesome particles by introducing the photons and intermediate bosons as gauge fields.

In retrospect, the model described in the paper was a major step forward in the unification of elementary-particle interactions. It is the most frequently cited paper on elementary-particles physics in the last half-century. But this was hardly apparent at the time. The model had two serious problems. One was that the gauge theory that Weinberg used contained certain inconsistencies (it was apparently not "renormalizable"), and though the paper asserted the difficulty could be eliminated, the claim was unsubstantiated. A second problem was that the model implied that so-called "neutral" weak interactions, in which no charge was exchanged, ought to exist. Thus far none had been detected.

These two problems were soon overcome. In 1971 a Dutch theorist, Gerard't Hooft, showed that Weinberg's hunch was correct, and that the scheme was indeed renormalizable. Around the same time several theorists, including Weinberg, demonstrated that if a fourth quark existed, the rate of neutral weak interactions would be less than the existing observational limit.

A similar model was also proposed by Weinberg's school colleague Sheldon Glashow and by the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam. The electroweak theory, as it is now called, made several important predictions that were confirmed one by one throughout the 1970s: neutral weak interactions at the reduced rate (1973), the existence of the fourth quark (1974), and an effect known as atomic parity violation (1978). Weinberg's Nobel Prize came the following year in 1979, shared with Glashow and Salam. The electroweak theory forms a major part of what has come to be known as the standard model of elementary-particle physics. This provides a comprehensive picture of the basic units of matter and their behavior and explains virtually all the experimental data physicists have been able to obtain.

Tying High-Energy Physics to Cosmology

Meanwhile, Weinberg had already been at work on other important steps in the drive toward unification. In 1974 he co-authored a paper describing how the coupling constants, or measures of strength, of the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions would converge at extremely high energies, such as existed in nature only fractions of a second after the Big Bang. This result gave further impetus to a growing convergence of interests between high-energy physicists and cosmologists. Three years later Weinberg wrote a book, The First Three Minutes (1977), which awakened many scientists and nonscientists to the importance of cosmology in understanding the present-day universe.

Though his Nobel Prize was for work in unification, Weinberg made significant contributions in a wide range of areas in particle physics and even in plasma physics. Among colleagues he was known more for versatility than for mathematical strength. One consequence of the stunning success of the standard model was that it outran the ability of experimental physicists to produce data that will enable theoretical physicists to make further advances. Concerned by this fact, Weinberg was one of the staunchest proponents of the superconducting supercollider (SSC), an ill-fated particle accelerator that would have been able to produce data whose implications reached beyond the standard model. However, that project was killed by the U.S. Congress in the fall of 1993.

At the University of Texas Weinberg became a senior statesman in the field of physics and a champion for the further development of elementary-particle physics. By 1994 The First Three Minutes had been translated into 22 foreign languages. He continued writing and made notable contributions to both the scientific and general literature. Writing for a general audience in Dreams of a Final Theory (1994) he argued the case for the SSC, reminding readers that "science has always had its enemies throughout history." Included among numerous theoretical publications, papers and presentations were Unbreaking Symmetries (1995), Pion Scattering Lengths (1996), Theories of the Cosmological Constant (1996), and Precise Relations Between the Spectra of Vector and Axial Vector Mesons (1997). He also wrote the highly regarded two-volume textbook The Quantum Theory of Fields, Vol. 1: Foundations (1995) and The Quantum Theory of Fields Vol. 2, Applications (1997). His colleagues considered him the foremost champion of the value and dignity of the scientific enterprise, an attitude of which the concluding line of The First Three Minutes offers a typical expression: "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg
Born	May 3, 1933 (age 75) New York City, New York, USA
Residence	United States
Nationality	United States
Ethnicity	Ashkenazi Jewish
Fields	Physics
Institutions	MIT Harvard University University of Texas at Austin
Alma mater	Cornell University Princeton University
Doctoral advisor	Sam Treiman
Doctoral students	Orlando Alvarez Claude Bernard Lay Nam Chang Bob Holdom Ubirajara van Kolck John Preskill Fernando Quevedo Mark G. Raizen Scott Willenbrock
Known for	Electromagnetism and Weak Force unification Weinberg-Witten theorem
Influenced	Alan Guth
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)
Religious stance	Atheist
Notes He is married to the professor of law, Louise Weinberg.

Biography

Steven Weinberg was born in 1933 in New York City, the son of Frederick and Eva Weinberg. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1950 and received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1954, living at the Cornell branch of the Telluride Association. He left Cornell and went to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen where he started his graduate studies and research. After one year, Weinberg returned to Princeton University where he earned his Ph.D. degree in Physics in 1957, studying under Sam Treiman.

Academic career

After completing his Ph.D., Weinberg worked as a professor at Columbia University (1957-1959) and University of California, Berkeley (1959-1966) and did research in a variety of topics of particle physics, such as the high energy behavior of quantum field theory, symmetry breaking, pion scattering, infrared photons and quantum gravity.^[1] It was also during this time that he developed the approach to quantum field theory that is described in the first chapters of his book The Quantum Theory of Fields^[2] and started to write his textbook Gravitation and Cosmology. Both textbooks, perhaps especially the second, are among the most influential texts in the scientific community in their subjects.

In 1966, Weinberg left Berkeley and accepted a lecturer position at Harvard. In 1967 he was visiting professor at MIT. It was in that year at MIT that Weinberg proposed his model of unification of electromagnetism and of nuclear weak forces (such as those involved in beta-decay and kaon-decay)^[3]. This model is now known as the electroweak unification theory. An important feature of this model is the prediction of the existence of another interaction mechanism between leptons, known as neutral current and mediated by the Z boson. The experimental discovery of this Z boson was one verification of the electroweak unification. The paper by Weinberg in which he presented this theory is one of the highest cited theoretical work ever in high energy physics as of 2006^[4].

After his 1967 seminal work on the unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions, Steven Weinberg continued his work in many aspects of particle physics, quantum field theory, gravity, supersymmetry, superstrings and cosmology.

In the years after 1967, the full Standard Model of elementary particle theory was developed through the work of many contributors. In it, the weak and electromagnetic interactions already unified by the work of Weinberg, Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, are further unified with the strong interactions, in one overarching theory. One of its fundamental aspects was the prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson. In 1973 Weinberg proposed a modification of the Standard Model which did not contain that model's fundamental Higgs boson.

Weinberg became Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard University in 1973.

It is of special importance that in 1979 he pioneered the modern view on the renormalization aspect of quantum field theory that considers all quantum field theories as effective field theories and changed completely the viewpoint of previous work (including his own) that a sensible quantum field theory must be renormalizable^[5]. This approach allowed the development of effective theory of quantum gravity^[6], low energy QCD, heavy quark effective field theory and other developments, and it is a topic of considerable interest in current research.

In 1979, after the experimental discovery of the neutral currents -- i.e. the discovery of the inferred existence of the Z boson --, Steven Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for developing their theory of electroweak unification.

In 1982 Weinberg moved to the University of Texas at Austin as the Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Regents Chair in Science and founded the Theory Group of the Physics Department.

There is current (2008) interest in Weinberg's 1976 proposal of the existence of new strong interactions^[7] -- a proposal dubbed "Technicolor" by Leonard Susskind -- because of its chance of being observed in the LHC as an explanation of the hierarchy problem.

Steven Weinberg's influence and importance are confirmed by the fact that he is frequently among the top scientists with highest research impact indices, such as the h-index and the creativity index.^[8]^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]

Other intellectual legacy

Besides his scientific research, Steven Weinberg has been a prominent public spokesman for science, testifying before Congress in support of the Superconducting Super Collider, writing articles for the New York Review of Books, and giving various lectures on the larger meaning of science. His books on science written for the public combine the typical scientific popularization with what is traditionally considered history and philosophy of science and atheism.

Weinberg was a major participant in what is known as the Science Wars, standing with Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, Alan Sokal, Lewis Wolpert, and Richard Dawkins, on the side arguing for the hard realism of science and scientific knowledge and against the constructionism proposed by such social scientists as Stanley Aronowitz, Barry Barnes, David Bloor, David Edge, Harry Collins, Steve Fuller, and Bruno Latour.

Weinberg is also known for his support of Israel. While this is not extraordinary in itself, he, like many American Jews, supports Israel from a liberal point of view. He wrote an essay titled "Zionism and Its Cultural Adversaries" to explain his views on the issue.

Weinberg has canceled trips to universities in the United Kingdom because of British boycotts directed towards Israel. He has explained:

"Given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicated a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than antisemitism.^[16]

His views on religion were expressed in a speech from 1999 in Washington, D.C.:

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "^[17]

He has also said:

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."^[18]

He attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium on November 2006.

Personal

He is married to Louise Weinberg and has one daughter, Elizabeth.

Honours and awards

The honors and awards that Prof Weinberg received include

Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from dozen institutions: University of Chicago, Knox College, City University of New York, University of Rochester, Yale University, City University of New York, Dartmouth College, Weizmann Institute, Clark University, Washington College, Columbia University, Bates College.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 1968
National Academy of Sciences, elected 1972
J. R. Oppenheimer Prize, 1973
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1977
Steel Foundation Science Writing Award, 1977, for authorship of The First Three Minutes (1977)
Elliott Cresson Medal (Franklin Institute), 1979
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979
Elected to American Philosophical Society, Royal Society of London (Foreign Honorary Member), Philosophical Society of Texas
James Madison Medal of Princeton University, 1991
National Medal of Science, 1991
Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, 1999.
2002 Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association
James Joyce - Ronan McNulty Award, University College Dublin, 2009

Bibliography: books authored / coauthored by SW

Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (1972)
The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (1977, updated with new afterword in 1993, ISBN 0-465-02437-8)
The Discovery of Subatomic Particles (1983)
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (1987; with Richard Feynman)
Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (1993), ISBN 0-09-922391-0
The Quantum Theory of Fields (three volumes: 1995, 1996, 2003)
Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (2001, 2003, HUP)
Glory and Terror: The Coming Nuclear Danger (2004, NYRB)
Cosmology (2008, OUP)

Weinberg, S. & G. Feinberg. "Law of Conservation of Muons", Columbia University, University of California-Berkeley, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (Feb. 1961).
Pais, A., Weinberg, S., Quigg, C., Riordan, M., Panofsky, W.K.H. & V. Trimble. "100 years of elementary particles", Stanford Linear Accelerator Center United States Department of Energy, Beam Line, vol. 27, issue 1, Spring 1997. (April 1, 1997).

References and notes

^ A partial list of this work is: Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 118 838-849 (1960); Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 127 965-970 (1962); Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. Lett. 17 616-621 (1966); Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 140 B516-B524 (1965).
^ Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 133, B1318-B1332 (1964); Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 134 B882-B896 (1964); Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. 181 1893-1899 (1969)
^ Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev.Lett. 19 1264-1266 (1967).
^ A list of the top cited papers in high energy physics can be found at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/
^ Weinberg, S. Physica 96A, 327 (1979)
^ Donoghue, J. F. Phys. Rev. D 50, 3874 (1994)
^ Weinberg, S. Phys. Rev. D13 974–996 (1976).
^ In 2006 Weinberg had the second highest creativity index among physicists http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/8/13/1
^ Publications on ArXiv
^ Short biography (w/ photo)
^ His articles in the New York Review of Books
^ His Autobiography serves as a general reference to this article.
^ The Atheism Tapes, program 2 - the transcript of an extended interview with Steven Weinberg for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series The Atheism Tapes.
^ Interview for Texas Monthly Talks.
^ Secular Philosophy
^ "Nobel laureate cancels London trip due to anti-Semitism". YNet News Jewish Daily. 24 May 2007. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3404128,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-01.
^ Steven Weinberg. "A Designer Universe?". http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm. Retrieved on 2008-07-14. "A version of the original quote from address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. in April 1999"
^ "What do you get if you divide science by God?". BBC News. 24 March 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7955846.stm. Retrieved on 2009-03-24.

External links

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Physics

Burton Richter / Samuel C. C. Ting (1976) · Philip Anderson / Nevill Mott / John van Vleck (1977) · Pyotr Kapitsa / Arno Penzias / Robert Wilson (1978) · Sheldon Glashow / Abdus Salam / Steven Weinberg (1979) · James Cronin / Val Fitch (1980) · Nicolaas Bloembergen / Arthur Schawlow / Kai Siegbahn (1981) · Kenneth G. Wilson (1982) · Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar / William Fowler (1983) · Carlo Rubbia / Simon van der Meer (1984) · Klaus von Klitzing (1985) · Ernst Ruska / Gerd Binnig / Heinrich Rohrer (1986) · Johannes Bednorz / Karl Müller (1987) · Leon M. Lederman / Melvin Schwartz / Jack Steinberger (1988) · Norman Ramsey / Hans Dehmelt / Wolfgang Paul (1989) · Jerome Friedman / Henry Kendall / Richard E. Taylor (1990) · Pierre de Gennes (1991) · Georges Charpak (1992) · Russell Hulse / Joseph Taylor (1993) · Bertram Brockhouse / Clifford Shull (1994) · Martin Perl / Frederick Reines (1995) · D. Lee / Douglas D. Osheroff / Robert Richardson (1996) · Steven Chu / Claude Cohen-Tannoudji / William Phillips (1997) · Robert B. Laughlin / Horst Störmer / Daniel C. Tsui (1998) · Gerardus 't Hooft / Martinus J. G. Veltman (1999) · Zhores Alferov / Herbert Kroemer / Jack Kilby (2000)

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Persondata
NAME	Weinberg, Steven
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	3 May 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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