Steven Weinberg is an American
theoreticalTheoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
physicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and
Nobel laureate in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
for his contributions with
Abdus SalamMohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk (Urdu: محمد عبد السلام, pronounced , (January 29, 1926– November 21, 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the electroweak unification of the...
and
Sheldon GlashowSheldon Lee Glashow is a Nobel Prize winning American theoretical physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University.-Birth and education:...
to the
unificationIn particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different...
of the weak force and
electromagneticElectromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...
interaction between elementary particles.
Biography
Steven Weinberg was born in 1933 in New York City to Jewish immigrants Frederick and Eva Weinberg. Weinberg is an atheist but he admits that he is not certain. He graduated from
Bronx High School of ScienceThe Bronx High School of Science is a specialized New York City public high school often considered the premier science magnet school in the United States. Founded in 1938, it is now located in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx...
in 1950 in the same graduating class as
Sheldon GlashowSheldon Lee Glashow is a Nobel Prize winning American theoretical physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University.-Birth and education:...
, whose own research, independent of Weinberg's, would result in them (and
Abdus SalamMohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk (Urdu: محمد عبد السلام, pronounced , (January 29, 1926– November 21, 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the electroweak unification of the...
) sharing the same 1979 Nobel in Physics (see below).
Weinberg received his bachelor's degree from
Cornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in 1954, living at the Cornell branch of the
Telluride AssociationThe Telluride Association is a non-profit organization in the United States that provides young people with free educational programs emphasizing intellectual curiosity, democratic self-governance, and social responsibility. Students are invited to apply based on academic criteria, such as high...
. He left Cornell and went to the
Niels Bohr InstituteThe Niels Bohr Institute is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics....
in
CopenhagenCopenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
where he started his graduate studies and research. After one year, Weinberg returned to
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
where he earned his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in
PhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
in 1957, studying under
Sam TreimanSam Bard Treiman was an American theoretical physicist who produced important research in the fields of cosmic rays, quantum physics, plasma physics and gravity physics. He made major contributions to the understanding of the weak interaction and he and his students are credited with developing...
.
Academic career
After completing his Ph.D., Weinberg worked as a post-doctoral researcher at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(1957–1959) and
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
(1959) and then he was promoted to faculty at Berkeley (1960–1966). He did research in a variety of topics of particle physics, such as the high energy behavior of
quantum field theoryQuantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...
,
symmetry breakingSymmetry breaking in physics describes a phenomenon where small fluctuations acting on a system which is crossing a critical point decide the system's fate, by determining which branch of a bifurcation is taken. To an outside observer unaware of the fluctuations , the choice will appear arbitrary...
,
pionIn particle physics, a pion is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Pions are the lightest mesons and they play an important role in explaining the low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force....
scattering, infrared photons and
quantum gravityQuantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics which attempts to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics with general relativity...
. 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 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 a 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
kaonIn particle physics, a kaon is any one of a group of four mesons distinguished by the fact that they carry a quantum number called strangeness...
-decay), with the masses of the force-carriers of the weak part of the interaction being explained by
spontaneous symmetry breakingSpontaneous symmetry breaking is the process by which a system described in a theoretically symmetrical way ends up in an apparently asymmetric state....
. One of its fundamental aspects was the prediction of the existence of the
Higgs bosonThe Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. Its existence is postulated as a means of resolving inconsistencies in the Standard Model...
. Weinberg's model, now known as the
electroweak unificationIn particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different...
theory, had the same symmetry structure as that proposed by Glashow in 1961: hence both models included the then-unknown weak interaction mechanism between leptons, known as
neutral currentWeak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the boson...
and mediated by the Z boson. The 1973 experimental discovery of this Z boson was one verification of the electroweak unification.
The paper by Weinberg in which he presented this theory was one of the highest cited theoretical works ever in high energy physics as of 2009.
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,
supersymmetryIn particle physics, supersymmetry is a symmetry that relates elementary particles of one spin to other particles that differ by half a unit of spin and are known as superpartners...
, superstrings and
cosmologyCosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, as well as a theory called
TechnicolorTechnicolor theories are models of physics beyond the standard model that address electroweak symmetry breaking, the mechanism through which elementary particles acquire masses...
.
In the years after 1967, the full
Standard ModelThe Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, which mediate the dynamics of the known subatomic particles. Developed throughout the mid to late 20th century, the current formulation was finalized in the mid 1970s upon...
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 SalamMohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk (Urdu: محمد عبد السلام, pronounced , (January 29, 1926– November 21, 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the electroweak unification of the...
and Sheldon Glashow, are made consistent with a theory of the strong interactions between quarks, in one overarching theory. 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
renormalizationIn quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, renormalization is any of a collection of techniques used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities....
aspect of quantum field theory that considers all quantum field theories as
effective field theoriesIn physics, an effective field theory is, as any effective theory, an approximate theory, that includes appropriate degrees of freedom to describe physical phenomena occurring at a chosen length scale, while ignoring substructure and degrees of freedom at shorter distances .-The renormalization...
and changed completely the viewpoint of previous work (including his own in his 1967 paper) that a sensible quantum field theory must be renormalizable. This approach allowed the development of effective theory of quantum gravity, low energy QCD, heavy quark effective field theory and other developments, and it is a topic of considerable interest in current research.
In 1979, some six years after the experimental discovery of the neutral currents — i.e. the discovery of the inferred existence of the Z boson — but following the 1978 experimental discovery of the theory's predicted amount of parity violation due to Z bosons' mixing with electromagnetic interactions, Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together with Sheldon Glashow, and
Abdus SalamMohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk (Urdu: محمد عبد السلام, pronounced , (January 29, 1926– November 21, 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the electroweak unification of the...
who had independently proposed a theory of electroweak unification based on spontaneous symmetry breaking.
In 1982 Weinberg moved to the
University of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in 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 -- a proposal dubbed "
TechnicolorTechnicolor theories are models of physics beyond the standard model that address electroweak symmetry breaking, the mechanism through which elementary particles acquire masses...
" by
Leonard SusskindLeonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology...
-- because of its chance of being observed in the
LHCThe Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....
as an explanation of the
hierarchy problemIn theoretical physics, a hierarchy problem occurs when the fundamental parameters of some Lagrangian are vastly different than the parameters measured by experiment. This can happen because measured parameters are related to the fundamental parameters by a prescription known as renormalization...
.
Steven Weinberg's influence and importance are confirmed by the fact that he is frequently among the top scientists with highest research effect indices, such as the
h-indexThe h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications...
and the creativity index.
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 ColliderThe Superconducting Super Collider was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas that was set to be world's largest and most energetic, surpassing the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider. Its planned ring circumference was with an energy...
, 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
historyThe history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
and
philosophyThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
of
scienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and
atheismAtheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
.
Weinberg was a major participant in what is known as the
Science WarsThe science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
, standing with
Paul R. GrossPaul R. Gross is a biologist and author, perhaps best known to the general public for Higher Superstition , written with Norman Levitt. Gross is the University Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Virginia; he previously served the university as Provost and Vice-President...
,
Norman LevittNorman Jay Levitt was a mathematician at Rutgers University. He was born in The Bronx and received a bachelors degree from Harvard College in 1963. He received a PhD from Princeton University in 1967...
,
Alan SokalAlan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
,
Lewis WolpertLewis Wolpert CBE FRS FRSL is a developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster.-Career:Wolpert was educated at the University of Witwatersrand , at Imperial College London, and at King's College London...
, and
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, on the side arguing for the hard
realismScientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be...
of science and scientific knowledge and against the
constructionismSocial constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
proposed by such social scientists as
Stanley AronowitzStanley Aronowitz is professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist and cultural critic and an advocate for organized labor.-Social Text:...
, Barry Barnes,
David BloorDavid Bloor is a professor in, and a former director of, the at the University of Edinburgh .He started his academic career in philosophy and psychology. In the 1970s he and Barry Barnes were the major figures of the strong programme, which put forward queries against philosophical a priorism in...
,
David EdgeDavid Eugene Edge is a former long-distance runner, who represented Canada at two consecutive Summer Olympics in the men's marathon...
,
Harry CollinsHarry Collins is a British professor at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. While at the University of Bath Professor Collins developed the Bath School approach to the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge...
, Steve Fuller, and
Bruno LatourBruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
.
Weinberg is also known for his support of
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. 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."
His views on religion were expressed in a speech from 1999 in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
:
- "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. "
(Well known mathematician
Freeman DysonFreeman John Dyson FRS is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
has criticized Weinberg's remark: "And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion.")
He has also said:
- "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
He attended and was a speaker at the
Beyond BeliefBeyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, the first of The Science Network's annual Beyond Belief symposia, held from November 5 to November 7, 2006, was described by the New York Times, as "a free-for-all on science and religion," which seemed at times like "the founding convention...
symposium in November 2006.
Honors and awards
The honors and awards that Professor Weinberg received include:
- Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from a dozen institutions: University of Chicago, Knox College, 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
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman...
, 1977
- Steel Foundation Science Writing Award, 1977, for authorship of The First Three Minutes (1977)
- Elliott Cresson Medal
The Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, was the highest award given by the Franklin Institute. The award was established by Elliott Cresson, life member of the Franklin Institute, with $1,000 granted in 1848...
(Franklin Institute), 1979
- Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
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
The Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, named for its first recipient, Lewis Thomas, is an annual literary prize awarded by Rockefeller University to scientists deemed to have accomplished a significant literary achievement: it "recognizes scientists as poets"...
, 1999.
- 2002 Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. "Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that...
- Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences, American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
, 2004
- James Joyce Award, University College Dublin, 2009
Scholarly articles
- Weinberg, S., A Model of Leptons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 19, 1264–1266 (1967) - the electroweak unification paper.
- Weinberg, S. & G. Feinberg. "Law of Conservation of Muons", Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, University of California-Berkeley, United States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy CommissionThe United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
), (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
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
, Beam Line, vol. 27, issue 1, Spring 1997. (April 1, 1997).
- Weinberg, S. "Pions in Large N Quantum Chromodynamics", Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 261601 (December 20, 2010)
Popular articles
- A Designer Universe?, a refutation of attacks on the theories of evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and cosmologyCosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
(e.g., those conducted under the rubric of intelligent designIntelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
) is based on a talk given in April 1999 at the Conference on Cosmic Design of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. This and other works express Weinberg's strongly held position that scientists should be less passive in defending science against anti-science religiosity.
External links
- Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information
The Office of Scientific and Technical Information is a component of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy...
, United States Department of EnergyThe United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
- Home Page of Steven Weinberg at University of Texas at Austin
- Steven Weinberg on LHC
- In CERN Courier, Steven Weinberg reflects on spontaneous symmetry breaking
- Oral history interview transcript with Steven Weinberg June 28, 1991, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
- Weinberg author page and archive from The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
- Publications on ArXiv
The arXiv |Chi]], χ) is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all...