Steven Weinberg
Brianna Stacey
Personal Life
Steven Weinberg was born in 1933. He attended Cornell and received a Bachelors Degree in 1954. He proceeded to do research at Niels Bohr Institute and continued to get a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1957. He has made many contributions to the realm of science and is now a professor at University of Texas at Austin where he founded the Theory Group in the physics department there. He has received many awards in his lifetime, the most notable being the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, the National Medal of Science in 1991, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society in 2004.
Contributions to Physics
He has/is completing research in fields including: quantum field theory, symmetry breaking, cosmology, supersymmetry, superstrings, technicolor, and in many other aspects of particle physics. He has published major known books, The Quantum Theory of Fields , Gravitation and Cosmology , The First Three Minutes , and Dreams of a Final Theory.
One of his first theories was electroweak unification theory. He discovered that there were weak neutral currents between leptons which helped support his theory. These interactions were explained by spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Another notable theory was the full Standard model of elementary particle theory. It incorporated the work of the electroweak forces he discovered, along with the work of many other scientists of the time.
He then proposed a more modern version of renormalization aspect in quantum physics saying that a sensible quantum field theory must be renormalizable. This allowed for theories such as lthe effective theory of quantum gravity and low energy qcd to emerge.
He is currently researching the possibility of new strong interactions, which he had considered to be Technicolor.
Connectedness
- This topic is interesting because it is about a very influential figure in science who keeps working to develop new theories.
- This is not particularly connected to my major, but I think its a good representation of new things are always waiting to be discovered in the realm of science.
References
[[Category:Notable Scientists]]