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Steven Weinberg (1933-2021)
August 23, 2021
Most people have heard the
expression, "
gone south," to describe a worsening situation. One possible
etymology for this expression is that
maps are usually created with
south as the downwards direction; and, downward movement, like
toast falling butter side down onto the floor, or a fall in the
Nasdaq Composite Index, is bad. About thirty years ago,
physics started a
migration away from the
Northern States and
Pacific Coast States to the
Southern States.
The North was the
putative center of US physics for most of the
20th century. This is clearly
evidenced by the places in which
military research was done during
World War II. The
MIT Radiation Laboratory developed
microwave radar systems from its creation in 1940 to its closure in 1945.
Physicist,
Karl Compton (1887-1954), was
president of MIT at the time, and
Columbia University physicist,
Isidor Rabi (1898-1988) was an important member of the Radiation Laboratory staff.
The modest start of the
atomic weapons Manhattan Project was at the
University of Chicago, where physicist,
Leó Szilárd (1898-1964), who had conceived the idea of the
nuclear chain reaction, and able
experimental physicist,
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), created the first
nuclear reactor in the
Metallurgical Laboratory of
Arthur Holly Compton (1892-1962). I wrote about this reactor in an
earlier article (The Chicago Pile, January 24, 2014)
.jpg)
An artist's recreation of the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) first sustained reaction on December 2, 1942, at 3:22 PM. The world's first nuclear reactor was housed in the Racquets Court under West Stands of Stagg Field, the University of Chicago. No photographers were present, possibly for security reasons. This recreation was done fifteen years after the fact. (National Archives and Records Administration image, via Wikimedia Commons. Click for larger image.)
The Manhattan Project was staffed by
many physicists from Cornell University. Among the Cornell notables were
Hans Bethe (1906-2005), who was the
director of the
theoretical physics division, and
Richard Feynman (1918-1988).
Princeton University was represented by
John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) and
Robert R. Wilson (1914-2000). The
University of California, Berkeley on the Pacific Coast was the home institution of
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and
Philip Morrison (1915-2005). Morrison assisted
Harvard University physical chemist,
George Kistiakowsky, in research into the development of
shaped charges for the
Fat Man bomb.
In an early
1990s competition for a new
national magnetism laboratory, MIT's
Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory lost to
Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida) in creation of the $60 million
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. This victory of the south over the north pales in comparison with the 1992
funding for the
Superconducting Super Collider a
particle accelerator at
Waxahachie, Texas, proposed as an advance over the existing
Fermilab's Tevatron at
Batavia, Illinois near
Chicago. However, after two billion dollars were spent on
construction by 1993, the project was canceled due to a rising final
cost estimate of $12 billion. Compare this to the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the
US government because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
Coincident with these events was the
savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s arising from the failure of about a third of
savings and loan associations. The
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated the cost to
American taxpayers of $132.1 billion. The net
flux of
public money represented a huge
wealth transfer from the North to the South.
At the end of his life,
Paul Dirac (1902-1984) spent a little more than a
decade as a
professor at
Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida). He
published 60
papers while at FSU, including a
book on
general relativity. Some of my physics
colleagues have migrated from the
Northeastern United States to such
Southern States as
Florida,
Texas, and
Louisiana. In 1982, American
theoretical physicist and
Nobel Laureate,
Steven Weinberg, moved from Harvard University to the
University of Texas at Austin to start a theoretical physics group. Weinberg, who was a
proponent of the aforementioned Superconducting Supercollider,[1-2] died on July 23, 2021, at age 88.[3-6]
Steven Weinberg at the 2010 Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas.
(Wikimedia Commons image by Larry D. Moore, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)
Steven Weinberg was born in
New York City in 1933 to
Jewish immigrant parents. His
father was a
court stenographer, and his
mother was a
housewife. Weinberg credited his father with encouraging his interest in
science.[4] He
graduated from the
Bronx High School of Science, where he taught himself
calculus, in 1950.[3] At the Bronx High School of Science, he was a
classmate with
Sheldon Glashow (b. 1932), with whom he shared the 1979
Nobel Prize in Physics. After receiving his
undergraduate degree from
Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) in 1954 as the first of his family to attend
college, he did a year's
graduate research at the
Niels Bohr Institute in
Copenhagen, and then attended
Princeton University.[3] At Princeton, he attained a
Ph.D. in physics for a 1957
dissertation on the
strong nuclear force under
Sam Treiman (1925-1999).
After a year's
postdoctoral research at
Columbia University (New York, NY), and another at the
University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Berkeley faculty, where he continued research on the
quantum aspects of
elementary particles, developed an approach to
quantum field theory, and developed an interest in
general relativity. Weinberg left Berkeley in 1966 for a
lecturer position at Harvard, and he was also a visiting professor at MIT. During that time in the late 1960s, Weinberg developed a
model for the
unification of
electromagnetism and the
weak nuclear force.
His 1967 paper, "A Model of Leptons," in
Physical Review Letters was just three pages long, but it combined elements of
gauge symmetry,
symmetry breaking and the
classification of particles.[3-4,7] Importantly, this paper
predicted properties of elementary particles that had never been observed.[3] This
theory, now called the
electroweak unification theory, predicted the existence of the
Higgs boson. His theory, which linked the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism, was the starting point for what is now called the
Standard Model.[3] In subsequent years, the Standard Model combined this electroweak unification with the strong nuclear force.
Weinberg used his scientific
fame to advocate against the
proliferation of nuclear weapons, and he was a
consultant for the
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.[3] Weinberg was an
atheist who believed that science should eradicate
religion. He is quoted as saying that "Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to
civilization."[4] Physics Nobelist,
Frank Wilczek (b. 1951), recalls that Weinberg "... paid close attention to other people's work. I remember several rather terrifying phone calls during which he quizzed me about details of mathematical derivations in my or others' papers."[4,8]
Weinberg was interested in
physical cosmology as well as elementary particle physics. His 1977 book, "
The First Three Minutes," introduced the topic of the
Big Bang to the general public.[4-5] His many honors include the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics that he shared with
Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, a
Fellowship in the
American Physical Society (1971), membership in the
National Academy of Sciences (1972), foreign membership in the
Royal Society (1981), election to the
American Philosophical Society (1982), the
National Medal of Science (1991), and a
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2021). He is survived by his
wife, Louise Weinberg, a
law professor at the University of Texas Austin.[3]
References:
- Steven Weinberg, "The Crisis of Big Science," New York Review of Books, May 10, 2012. {Note-This article is unfortunately paywalled. However, an excellent summary can be found in the next reference.
- Steven T. Corneliussen, "Steven Weinberg in the New York Review of Books: "The crisis of big science" - Nobel laureate sees "anti-tax mania" closing a century of high-energy physics in gloom,"Physics Today, April 4, 2012.
- UT Austin Mourns Death of World-Renowned Physicist Steven Weinberg, University of Texas Press Release, July 24, 2021.
- Frank Wilczek, "Obituary: Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) - Theoretical physicist whose electroweak theory won the Nobel prize." Nature, vol. 596 (August 6, 2021), p.183, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02170-w.
- Tom Siegfried, "With Steven Weinberg’s death, physics loses a titan," Science News, July 24, 2021.
- Ken Miller, "Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg dies at 88," phys.org, July 25, 2021.
- Steven Weinberg, "A Model of Leptons, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 19, no. 21 (November 20, 1967) , DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.19.1264.
- Wilzek and I have in common a Polish and Italian ancestry, with reversed parental origin. Alas, we are not kindred Nobel Laureates.
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