Rainer Weiss

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Rainer Weiss (2006)

Rainer Weiss (called Rai Weiss ; born September 29, 1932 in Berlin ) is an American physicist.

He is one of the leading scientists in the LIGO project, in which measurements are carried out on gravitational wave detectors . In 2017, together with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves .

Life

Rainer Weiss is one of two children from a Judeo-Christian family. His father Friedrich Weiss was a neurologist, communist and friend of the Rathenau family . His family fled from the National Socialists in Germany first to Prague and in 1938 to the USA.

Weiss went to school in New York City (Columbia Grammar School) and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received his bachelor's degree in 1955 and his PhD in 1962 under Jerrold Zacharias . As a post-graduate student, he was at Tufts University as an instructor and assistant professor until 1962 and then at Princeton University , where he worked with Robert Dicke and David Todd Wilkinson . From 1964 he was an assistant professor at MIT, where he became an associate professor in 1967 and a professor in 1973. Since 2001 he has been Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor at Louisiana State University .

His PhD students include Nergis Mavalvala and Rana Adhikari .

plant

Weiss initially dealt with atomic physics and the development of atomic clocks . In the 1970s he was one of the pioneers in measuring the cosmic microwave background with balloon measurements and was then involved in the management of the COBE satellite for its measurement. In the late 1980s he played a leading role in the development of laser interferometers for gravitational wave detectors, which led to the LIGO project.

Honors and memberships

In 1991 he received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for the COBE program. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the New York Academy of Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). In 2000 he was a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2007 he received the Einstein Prize of the APS. In 2006 he received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology as part of the COBE team , and again in 2016, together with others in the LIGO team. Also in 2016 he received the Special Fundamental Physics Prize as well as the Shaw Prize , the Kavli Prize and the Harvey Prize . Since 2016 Thomson Reuters has counted him among the favorites for a Nobel Prize ( Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates ) due to the number of his citations . For 2017 he was awarded the Willis E. Lamb Prize and the Princess of Asturias Prize . Also in 2017 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. In 2018 Weiss was awarded the Joseph Weber Prize for astronomical instrumentation .

Fonts

  • Gravitational Radiation. In: Reviews of Modern Physics. Centennial Issue 1999
  • with Barish: LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves In: Physics Today . October 1999

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nobel Prize in Physics 2017
  2. ↑ Rainer Weiss Biography , Kavli Prize , accessed on October 3, 2017 (en.)
  3. ↑ Weiss Measurements of the Cosmic Background Radiation , Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 18, 1980, p. 489, "The COBE Project", Physica Scripta, Volume 21, 1980, p. 670
  4. ↑ Web of Science Predicts 2016 Nobel Prize Winners. PR Newswire, September 21, 2016, accessed May 9, 2019 .
  5. ^ Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne receive the Nobel Prize for Physics , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 3, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Rainer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weiss, Rai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin