Steven Weinberg

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Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
and Nobel laureate in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics

The 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 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine....
for his contributions with Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam was a Demographics of Pakistan theoretical physicist, Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in electroweak theory....
and Sheldon Glashow

Sheldon Lee Glashow

Sheldon Lee Glashow is an United States physics. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University....
to the unification

Electroweak interaction

In particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction....
of the weak force and electromagnetic

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism is the physics of the electromagnetic field, a field which exerts a force on Elementary particles with the property of electric charge and which is reciprocally affected by the presence and motion of such particles....
interaction between elementary particles.

en Weinberg was born in 1933 in New York City

New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
, the son of Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Weinberg. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science

Bronx High School of Science

The Bronx High School of Science is a Specialized High Schools of New York City New York City public high school. Founded in 1938, it is currently located in the Bedford Park, Bronx, New York section of the Bronx....
in 1950 and received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university with four Statutory college. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar....
in 1954, living at the Cornell branch of the Telluride Association

Telluride Association

The 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....
.

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Quotations

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

The First Three Minutes (1993)

It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.

Physics Today (November 2005) page 35

Encyclopedia

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American

United States

Physicist

Nobel Prize in Physics

Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam was a Demographics of Pakistan theoretical physicist, Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in electroweak theory....
and Sheldon Glashow

Sheldon Lee Glashow

Sheldon Lee Glashow is an United States physics. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University....
to the unification

Electroweak interaction

Electromagnetism

Biography

Steven Weinberg was born in 1933 in New York City

New York City

Bronx High School of Science

Cornell University

Telluride Association

Niels Bohr Institute

The Niels Bohr Institute is a research institute at the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics....
in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban area with a population of 1,153,615 . Copenhagen is situated on the Islands of Zealand and Amager....
where he started his graduate studies and research. After one year, Weinberg returned to Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
where he earned his Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
degree in Physics

Physics

Physics is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as energy, force, and spacetime and all that derives from these, such as mass, charge, matter and its Motion ....
in 1957, studying under Sam Treiman

Sam Treiman

Sam Bard Treiman was an American theoretical physicist who produced important research in the fields of quantum physics, plasma physics and gravity physics....
.

Academic career

After completing his Ph.D., Weinberg worked as a professor at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
(1957-1959) and University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
(1959-1966) and did research in a variety of topics of particle physics, such as the high energy behavior of quantum field theory

Quantum field theory

Quantum field theory or QFT provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanics models of systems classically described by field or of Many-body problem....
, symmetry breaking

Symmetry breaking

Symmetry breaking in physics describes a phenomenon where small fluctuations acting on a system crossing a Critical point decide a system's fate, by determining which branch of a Bifurcation theory is taken....
, pion

Pion

In particle physics, a pion is any of three subatomic particles: , and . Pions are the lightest mesons and play an important role in explaining low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force....
scattering, infrared photons and quantum gravity

Quantum gravity

Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics attempting to unify quantum mechanics, which describes three of the Fundamental interaction , with general relativity, the theory of the fourth fundamental force: Gravitation....
. 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 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

Kaon

In 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). 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

Neutral current

Weak 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 the interaction is called 'neutral' because the has no electric charge....
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.

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

Supersymmetry

In particle physics, supersymmetry is a symmetry that relates elementary particles of one Spin to another particle that differs by half a unit of spin and are known as superpartners....
, superstrings and cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it. Though the word cosmology is recent , study of the Universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion....
.

In the years after 1967, the full Standard Model

Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory of three of the four known fundamental interactions and the elementary particles that take part in these interactions....
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

Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam was a Demographics of Pakistan theoretical physicist, Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in electroweak theory....
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

Higgs boson

In particle physics, the Higgs boson is a massive Scalar field theory elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model.The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not yet been observed....
. 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

Renormalization

In quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similarity geometric structures, renormalization refers to a collection of techniques used to take a continuum limit....
aspect of quantum field theory that considers all quantum field theories as effective field theories

Effective field theory

In physics, an effective field theory is 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 ....
and changed completely the viewpoint of previous work (including his own) 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, 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

Abdus Salam

Abdus Salam was a Demographics of Pakistan theoretical physicist, Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work in electroweak theory....
and Sheldon Glashow for developing their theory of electroweak unification.

In 1982 Weinberg moved to the University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a public university research university located in Austin, Texas, Texas, United States, and is the flagship#University campuses institution of University of Texas System....
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 "Technicolor

Technicolor (physics)

In physics, technicolor models are theories beyond the Standard Model which do not have a scalar field Higgs field. Instead, they have a larger number of fermion fields than the Standard Model and involve a larger gauge group....
" by Leonard Susskind

Leonard Susskind

Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University in the field of string theory and quantum field theory....
-- because of its chance of being observed in the LHC

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the List of accelerators in particle physics#Hadron colliders particle accelerator, intended to Collider opposing Charged particle beam, of either protons at an energy of 7 TeV/particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV/nucleus....
as an explanation of the hierarchy problem

Hierarchy problem

In theoretical physics, a hierarchy problem occurs when the fundamental parameters of some Lagrangian mechanics are vastly different from the parameters measured by experiment....
.

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

H-index

The -index is an Index that quantifies both the actual scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. 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 people's 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 Collider

Superconducting Super Collider

The Superconducting Super Collider would have been the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex that was planned to be built mostly in Waxahachie, Texas....
, 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

History of science

Science is a body of empirical knowledge, theory, and Procedural knowledge knowledge about the Nature, produced by a global community of researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, experimentation and scientific explanation of real world phenomenon....
and philosophy

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science....
of science

Science

In its broadest sense, science refers to any systematic knowledge or practice. In its more usual restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research....
and atheism

Atheism

Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deity, or the explicit view that Existence of God.Many list of atheists are Skepticism of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empiricism evidence for the existence of deities....
.

Weinberg was a major participant in what is known as the Science Wars

Science wars

The science wars were a series of intellectual battles in the 1990s between "Postmodernism" and "Scientific realism" about the nature of scientific theories....
, standing with Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt

Norman Levitt

Norman Jay Levitt is a mathematician at Rutgers University. He received a PhD from Princeton University in 1967....
, Alan Sokal

Alan Sokal

Alan 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....
, Lewis Wolpert

Lewis Wolpert

Lewis Wolpert Commander of the Order of the British Empire Fellow of the Royal Society Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature is a Developmental biology, author, and Presenter....
, and Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, Royal Society#Fellowship, Royal Society of Literature is a United Kingdom ethology, evolutionary biology and popular science author....
, on the side arguing for the hard realism

Realism

Realism, Realist or Realistic may refer to:*Realism , the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life*Realism , a movement towards greater fidelity to real life...
of science and scientific knowledge and against the constructionism

Constructionism

Constructionism may refer to* Social constructionism* Strict constructionism - a term referring to a conservative type of legal or constitutional interpretation....
proposed by such social scientists as Stanley Aronowitz

Stanley Aronowitz

Stanley 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....
, Barry Barnes

Barry Barnes

S. Barry Barnes is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. Barnes worked at the 'Science Studies Unit' at the University of Edinburgh with David Bloor in the 1980s and early 1990s, where they developed the strong programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge....
, David Bloor

David Bloor

'David 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....
, David Edge

David Edge

David Edge is a former long-distance Running, who represented Canada at two consecutive Summer Olympics in the men's marathon. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California he did not finish, four years later in Seoul, South Korea he finished in 67th place....
, Harry Collins

Harry Collins

Harry Collins is a 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

Steve Fuller (social epistemologist)

Steve William Fuller is an American philosopher-sociologist in the field of science and technology studies....
, and Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour is a France sociology of science, Anthropology and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies . After teaching at the ?cole des Mines de Paris from 1982 to 2006, he is now Professor and vice-president for research at the Institut d'?tudes politiques de Paris , where he is associated with the Centre d...
.

Weinberg is also known for his support of Israel

Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
. 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

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
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
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far 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.

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, founded on July 16, 1790....
:

"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. "

He attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival

Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival was the first event of the annual Beyond Belief which brings together a group of scientists and philosophers to explore questions and answers about human nature and society....
symposium on November 2006.

Personal
He is married to Louise Weinberg
Louise Weinberg

Louise Weinberg is Professor of Law and holder of the Bates Chair at the University of Texas School of Law. She teaches and writes in the fields of constitutional law and federal courts....
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
Lewis Thomas Prize

The Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, named for its first recipient, Lewis Thomas, is an annual literary award 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
American Humanist Association

The American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. It embraces secular, religious, and other manifestations of Humanist philosophy....
James Joyce - Ronan McNulty Award, University College Dublin, 2009

Popular articles
, critically discussing the possibility of the intelligent design
Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the term used for the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of life are best explained by an intelligent causality, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God that avoids specifying the nature or identity of th...
of the universe, 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.

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
Richard Feynman

Richard Phillips Feynman was an United States physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics ....
)
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
Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913....
)
Glory and Terror: The Coming Nuclear Danger (2004, NYRB
NYRB

NYRB can refer to:*The New York Review of Books, a literary magazine.*Red Bull New York, a football team from New York that competes in the United States as a part of Major League Soccer. ...
)
Cosmology (2008, OUP
Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is a publisher and a department of the University of Oxford in England. It is the largest university press in the world, being larger than all the American university presses combined with Cambridge University Press....
)

Weinberg, S. & G. Feinberg. , Columbia University
Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
, University of California-Berkeley, United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is a United States Cabinet-level department of the United States government of the United States responsible for Energy policy of the United States and nuclear safety....
(through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission
Atomic Energy Commission

Many countries have or have had an Atomic Energy Commission. These include:* Australian Atomic Energy Commission * Danish Atomic Energy Commission ...
), (Feb. 1961).

Pais, A., Weinberg, S., Quigg, C., Riordan, M., Panofsky, W.K.H. & V. Trimble. , Stanford Linear Accelerator Center United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is a United States Cabinet-level department of the United States government of the United States responsible for Energy policy of the United States and nuclear safety....
, Beam Line, vol. 27, issue 1, Spring 1997. (April 1, 1997).

External links

, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information
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 Energy
United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is a United States Cabinet-level department of the United States government of the United States responsible for Energy policy of the United States and nuclear safety....

from The New York Review of Books