James Peebles

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James Peebles

Philip James ("Jim") Edwin Peebles (born April 25, 1935 in St Boniface , suburb of Winnipeg , Manitoba ) is a leading Canadian and American cosmologist . He received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his fundamental contributions to cosmology.

life and work

Peebles studied at the University of Manitoba (bachelor's degree in 1958) and received his doctorate in 1962 with Robert Dicke (under whose influence he switched from particle physics to cosmology) at Princeton University , where he remained throughout his career and is now professor emeritus. He is currently Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus (succeeding Dicke).

He made valuable contributions to the Big Bang model and, together with Dicke and others, predicted 3K background radiation in the 1960s , as did George Gamow and colleagues in the 1940s, but whose prediction had been forgotten.

Peebles is a leading authority on cosmology and dealt with the subject extensively long before it was "fashionable". He made important contributions to the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (frequency of light elements such as helium, which confirmed the Big Bang theory in 1966 ), structure formation in the early universe (statistical distribution of the clustering of galaxies and galaxy clusters , which are more precisely determined with computers from the 1970s onwards could) and the questions of dark matter or dark energy . He investigated the existence of dark matter with Jerry Ostriker (Princeton) as early as the late 1970s and found large amounts of dark matter in the halos of galaxies. In the 1980s, however, he was skeptical of the - in his opinion too easily adopted - assumption of dark matter in cosmological models of galaxy formation and looked for alternatives. Today he sees the Cold Dark Matter Models (CDM) well confirmed, even if he still sees some unanswered questions, such as the phenomenon of bubbles (voids) in the galaxy distribution. He pointed out the necessity of a cosmological constant early in the 1980s , but sees this as a foreign body in the current theoretical structure.

His book Principles of Physical Cosmology is a standard work that did much to establish cosmology as an important field of research.

The minor planet (18242) Peebles is named after him.

He has been married to Alison Peebles since 1958 and has three children. In addition to being a Canadian, he is also a US citizen.

Awards

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and received the Order of Manitoba . He is a multiple honorary doctor.

Publications

Books

  • PJE Peebles: Principles of Physical Cosmology , Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993 (first edition as Physical Cosmology , Princeton University Press 1971).
  • PJE Peebles: The large-scale structure of the universe , Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1980.
  • PJE Peebles: Quantum Mechanics , Princeton UP 1992
  • Lyman A. Page Jr., R. Bruce Partridge, PJE Peebles (Eds.): Finding the Big Bang , Cambridge UP 2009

Articles (selection)

  • RH Dicke, PJE Peebles, PG Roll, DT Wilkinson: Cosmic Black-Body Radiation . Astrophys. J. 142, 414 (1965).
  • PJE Peebles: Primordial Helium Abundance and the Primordial Fireball. II . Astrophys. J. 146, 542 (1966).
  • PJE Peebles: Primordial Helium Abundance and the Primordial Fireball. I : Phys. Rev. Lett. 16, 410 (1966).
  • PJE Peebles, RH Dicke : Origin of the Globular Star Clusters . Astrophys. J. 154, 891 (1968).
  • PJE Peebles: Origin of the Angular Momentum of Galaxies . Astrophys. J. 155, 393 (1969).
  • PJE Peebles, JT Yu: Primeval adiabatic perturbation in an expanding universe . Astrophys. J. 162, 815 (1970).
  • JP Ostriker, PJE Peebles: A Numerical Study of the Stability of Flattened Galaxies: or, can Cold Galaxies Survive? . Astrophys. J. 186, 467 (1973).
  • EJ Groth, PJE Peebles: Statistical Analysis Of Catalogs Of Extragalactic Objects. 7. Two And Three Point Correlation Functions For The High-Resolution Shane-Wirtanen Catalog Of Galaxies . Astrophys. J. 217, 385 (1977).
  • PJE Peebles: Large-scale background temperature and mass fluctuations due to scale-invariant primeval perturbations . Astrophys. J. 263, L1 (1982).
  • M. Davis, PJE Peebles: A survey of galaxy redshifts. V - The two-point position and velocity correlations . Astrophys. J. 267, 465 (1983).
  • B. Rhatra, PJE Peebles: Cosmological consequences of a rolling homogeneous scalar field . Phys. Rev. D 37, 3406 (1988).
  • B. Rhatra, PJE Peebles: Cosmology with a time-variable cosmological 'constant' . Astrophys. J. 325, L17 (1988).
  • M. Fukugita, CJ Hogan, PJE Peebles: The cosmic baryon budget . Astrophys. J. 503, 518 (1998) arxiv : astro-ph / 9712020 .
  • B. Rhatra, PJE Peebles: The cosmological constant and dark energy . Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 559 (2003) arxiv : astro-ph / 0207347 .
  • PJE Peebles: Making sense of modern cosmology , Scientific American January 2001
  • PJE Peebles: Cosmological tests , Oskar Klein Memorial Lectures, 2001, arxiv : astro-ph / 0102327

literature

  • Interview with Alan Lightman in Alan and Robert Brawer: Origins - the life and world of modern cosmologists, Harvard University Press, 1990

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Autobiography on the occasion of the Shaw Prize, see web links
  2. ↑ Princeton homepage, accessed June 2010, see web links
  3. ↑ Autobiography on the occasion of Shaw Prize: a term that makes no sense within physics as we understand it
  4. ↑ Canadian-born James Peebles wins Nobel prize in physics , Edmonton Journal, October 8, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Peebles, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peebles, Jim; Peebles, Philip James Edwin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian-American cosmologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Winnipeg , Manitoba, Canada