Julius Wess
Julius Wess (born December 5, 1934 in Oberwölz in Styria , † August 8, 2007 in Hamburg ) was an Austrian physicist.
Life
Wess received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna in 1957 as a student of Hans Thirring . As a post-doctoral student he was at CERN , New York University and the University of Washington in Seattle and completed his habilitation in Vienna in 1965. In 1966 he became an Associate Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University . In 1968 he was appointed full professor and director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Karlsruhe . After several rejected appointments, he finally moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1990 and was also appointed director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich.
He was visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study ( Einstein Professor 1980), the University of Vienna ( Schrödinger Professor 1985) and the University of California, Berkeley ( Miller Professor 1986).
From 1993 to 1996, Wess headed the Scientific Council of the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. He also participated intensively in the development of new scientific structures in physics in the new federal states after the fall of the Wall and in the former Yugoslavia.
After his retirement in 2002, he was most recently a guest at DESY, where he also devoted himself to teaching, in particular on supersymmetry and supergravity , at the University of Hamburg . Wess was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.
Services
Wess gained worldwide recognition among colleagues in the field of mathematical physics , in particular elementary particle physics , supersymmetry and supergravity. In the 1960s he was one of the first to apply the SU (3) group (used around the same time for the quark concept by Murray Gell-Mann and others ) in elementary particle physics. He also examined two-dimensional quantum field theories and conformal symmetry and, with Bruno Zumino, from 1967 onwards, nonlinear representations of chiral symmetry (Wess-Zumino term, chiral anomaly).
In 1973, together with Bruno Zumino at the University of Karlsruhe, he discovered the first quantum field theory with supersymmetry in four space-time coordinates, which was later named after him as the Wess-Zumino model and can certainly be seen as an "invention" of supersymmetry . Regardless of this, supersymmetry was also "discovered" somewhat earlier by Russian scientists, but this was ignored in the West, and also by some early string theorists .
Later he dealt with non-commutative spaces as the basis of quantum field theories.
Fonts
- with Jonathan Bagger: Supersymmetry and Supergravity. Princeton Series in Physics, 1983, Revised Edition, 1992, ISBN 0-691-02530-4 .
- with Bruno Zumino: Supergauge transformations in four dimensions. In: Nuclear Physics B, Volume 70, 1974, pp. 39-50.
Awards
- 1986: Leibniz Prize of the DFG
- 1987: Max Planck Medal from the DPG
- 1988: Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (together with Bruno Zumino)
- 1990: Honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna
- 1992: Wigner Medal (together with Bruno Zumino)
- 1992: Max Planck Research Award (together with Bruno Zumino)
- 2005: Honorary doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin
Memberships
- Corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
- Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
- Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
- 2005: Honorary member of the Austrian Physical Society
Julius Wess Prize
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has been awarding the Julius Wess Prize in honor of Wess since 2008. Prize winners are:
- 2008: Frank Wilczek
- 2009: John Ellis
- 2010: Valeri Anatolyevich Rubakov
- 2011: Guido Altarelli
- 2012: Peter Jenni and Michel Della Negra
- 2013: Takaaki Kajita
- 2014: Arkady Vainshtein
- 2015: Lisa Randall
- 2016: Robert Klanner
- 2017: Francis Halzen
- 2018: Sally Dawson
literature
- Wilhelm Brenig : Julius Wess. 1934-2007. In: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 2007 (PDF; 59 kB).
Web links
- Literature by and about Julius Wess in the catalog of the German National Library
- On the death of Prof. Dr. Julius Wess, press release of the Committee for Elementary Particle Physics KET ( Memento from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 98 kB)
- Obituary of the Max Planck Society for Julius Wess ( Memento from September 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 458 kB)
Individual evidence
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Wess, Julius |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian physicist |
DATE OF BIRTH | December 5, 1934 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Oberwölz |
DATE OF DEATH | August 8, 2007 |
Place of death | Hamburg |