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Rainer Weiss

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Rainer Weiss
Weiss in June 2018
Born (1932-09-29) September 29, 1932 (age 92)
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, PhD)
Known forPioneering laser interferometric gravitational wave observation
AwardsEinstein Prize (2007)
Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016)
Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016)
Shaw Prize (2016)
Kavli Prize (2016)
Harvey Prize (2016)
Princess of Asturias Award (2017)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2017)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Laser physics
Experimental gravitation
Cosmic background measurements
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Tufts University
ThesisStark Effect and Hyperfine Structure of Hydrogen Fluoride (1962)
Doctoral advisorJerrold R. Zacharias
Doctoral studentsNergis Mavalvala
Philip K. Chapman
Rana X. Adhikari
Other notable studentsBruce Allen
Sarah Veatch
Rainer Weiss during Nobel Prize press conference in Stockholm, December 2017

Rainer "Rai" Weiss (/ws/ WYSSE, German: [vaɪs]; born September 29, 1932) is a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT and an adjunct professor at LSU. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.[1][2][3]

In 2017, Weiss was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".[4][5][6][7]

Weiss has helped realize a number of challenging experimental tests of fundamental physics. He is a member of the Fermilab Holometer experiment, which uses a 40m laser interferometer to measure properties of space and time at quantum scale and provide Planck-precision tests of quantum holographic fluctuation.[8][9]

Early life and education

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Rainer Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Gertrude Loesner and Frederick A. Weiss.[10][11] His father, a physician, neurologist, and psychoanalyst, was forced out of Germany by Nazis because he was Jewish and an active member of the Communist Party. His mother, an actress, was Christian.[12] His aunt was the sociologist Hilda Weiss.

The family fled first to Prague, but Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia after the 1938 Munich Agreement caused them to flee again; the philanthropic Stix family of St. Louis helped them obtain visas to enter the United States.[13] Weiss spent his youth in New York City, where he attended Columbia Grammar School.

He studied at MIT, dropping out at the beginning of his junior year[14] with the excuse that he had abandoned his coursework to pursue a romantic relationship with a music student from Chicago.[15] While this affair was a contributing factor, Weiss's concurrent vacillation between MIT's engineering and physics tracks may also have played a significant role. Jerrold Zacharias, then an influential physicist and MIT professor, intervened, and Weiss, after working as a technician in Zacharias's lab, eventually returned to receive his S.B. degree in 1955. He would complete his Ph.D. in 1962, still with Zacharias as advisor/mentor.[16][15]

Career

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He taught at Tufts University from 1960 to 1962, was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University from 1962 to 1964, and then joined the faculty at MIT in 1964.[10]

For Weiss's initial work at MIT, he started a group studying cosmology and gravitation. Needing to develop new technology, particularly in regards to the stabilization of equipment set to measure minute fluctuations, his lab included machine and electronics shop, with a hands-on expectation of his students for fabrication and design.[15]

He had an idea during this period regarding the building of a Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), but believed that such a machine could not be built with the then current technologies, because it could not "actually" be constructed with sufficient sensitivity.

By 1966, Weiss's tenure at MIT was at risk because of the failure of his group to produce publications. On advice from Bernard Burke, then head of the division on astrophysics in the Physics Department, Weiss recalibrated his standards for submitting articles for publication, eventually finding grounds for publication that he believed met his personal standards as scientifically worthy and publishable. He was then able to qualify for tenure and remain at MIT.[15]

Vietnam Era cuts to science grants

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In 1973, Weiss was forced to pivot with his work as the US military cut funding for any science that was not determined to be "directly relevant to its core mission." Weiss wrote a proposal to the NSF that described "a new way to measure gravitational waves." This was the work that would eventually lead to his 2017 Nobel Prize, though it was many years before the interferometers Weiss and his students built were sensitive enough to actually detect gravitational waves, making for numerous unpleasant doctoral thesis defenses where Weiss's graduate students were unable to present positive (in layman's terms: any) results.[15]

MIT/Caltech collaboration

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Weiss at MIT and Kip Thorne at Caltech joined forces in the early 1980s in recognition of the scale of work and resources necessary to bring the gravitational wave project to fulfillment.

In a 2022 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Weiss talks about his life and career, the memories of his childhood and youth, his undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT, and the future of gravitational waves astronomy.[17]

Achievements

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Weiss brought two fields of fundamental physics research from birth to maturity: characterization of the cosmic background radiation,[3] and interferometric gravitational wave observation.

In 1973 he made pioneering measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, taken from a weather balloon, showing that the microwave background exhibited the thermal spectrum characteristic of the remnant radiation from the Big Bang.[14] He later became co-founder and science advisor of the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite,[1] which made detailed mapping of the radiation.

Weiss also pioneered the concept of using lasers for an interferometric gravitational wave detector, suggesting that the path length required for such a detector would necessitate kilometer-scale arms. He built a prototype in the 1970s, following earlier work by Robert L. Forward.[18][19] He co-founded the NSF LIGO (gravitational-wave detection) project,[20] which was based on his report "A study of a long Baseline Gravitational Wave Antenna System".[21]

Both of these efforts couple challenges in instrument science with physics important to the understanding of the Universe.[22]

In February 2016, he was one of the four scientists of LIGO/Virgo collaboration presenting at the press conference for the announcement that the first direct gravitational wave observation had been made in September 2015.[23][24][25][26][a]

Personal Life

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Classical music was a profound influence and shaping force in Weiss's life, from his early youth in an immigrant family, through his shared love of Beethoven's Spring Sonata, which cemented his deep personal relationship with mentor Jerrold Zacharias.[15]

He married and had his first child while still in graduate school, "the best time of my life."

Honors and awards

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Rainer Weiss has been recognized by numerous awards including:

Selected publications

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Notes

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  1. ^ Other physicists presenting were Gabriela González, David Reitze, Kip Thorne, and France A. Córdova from the NSF.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Lars Brink (June 2, 2014). Nobel Lectures in Physics (2006–2010). World Scientific. pp. 25–. ISBN 978-981-4612-70-8.
  2. ^ a b "NASA and COBE Scientists Win Top Cosmology Prize". NASA. 2006. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2016.
  3. ^ a b Weiss, Rainer (1980). "Measurements of the Cosmic Background Radiation". Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 18: 489–535. Bibcode:1980ARA&A..18..489W. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.18.090180.002421.
  4. ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017". The Nobel Foundation. October 3, 2017. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  5. ^ Rincon, Paul; Amos, Jonathan (October 3, 2017). "Einstein's waves win Nobel Prize". BBC News. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  6. ^ Overbye, Dennis (October 3, 2017). "2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Black Hole Researchers". The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  7. ^ Kaiser, David (October 3, 2017). "Learning from Gravitational Waves". The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  8. ^ Emily Tapp (October 6, 2017). "Why we built the Holometer". IOP, Classical and Quantum Gravity journal. Retrieved October 22, 2017.
  9. ^ Aaron Chou; et al. (2017). "The Holometer: an instrument to probe Planckian quantum geometry". Class. Quantum Grav. 34 (6): 065005. arXiv:1611.08265. Bibcode:2017CQGra..34f5005C. doi:10.1088/1361-6382/aa5e5c. S2CID 119065032.
  10. ^ a b "Weiss CV at mit.edu" (PDF).
  11. ^ "MIT physicist Rainer Weiss shares Nobel Prize in physics". MIT News. October 3, 2017.
  12. ^ "Rainer Weiss Biography" (PDF). kavliprize.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 13, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
  13. ^ Shirley K. Cohen (May 10, 2000). "Interview with Rainer Weiss" (PDF). Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 22, 2017.
  14. ^ a b Cho, Adrian (August 4, 2016). "Meet the College Dropout who Invented the Gravitational Wave Detector", Science. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Goodman, Daniel (2019). "Find Your Path: Unconventional Lessons from 36 Leading Scientists and Engineers". MIT Press. pp. 239–51. Retrieved March 19, 2025.
  16. ^ Weiss, Rainer (1962). Stark effect and hyperfine structure of hydrogen fluoride (Ph.D.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OCLC 33374441 – via ProQuest.
  17. ^ Interview with Rainer Weiss (2017 Physics Nobel Prize Laureate). Federal University of Pará. 2022.
  18. ^ Cho, Adrian (October 3, 2017). "Ripples in space: U.S. trio wins physics Nobel for discovery of gravitational waves," Science. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  19. ^ Cervantes-Cota, Jorge L., Galindo-Uribarri, Salvador, and Smoot, George F. (2016). "A Brief History of Gravitational Waves," Universe, 2, no. 3, 22. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  20. ^ Mervis, Jeffrey. "Got gravitational waves? Thank NSF's approach to building big facilities". Science Magazine. ISSN 1095-9203. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
  21. ^ Linsay, P., Saulson, P., and Weiss, R. (1983). "A Study of a Long Baseline Gravitational Wave Antenna System, NSF. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  22. ^ David Shoemaker (2012). "The Evolution of Advanced LIGO" (PDF). LIGO Magazine (1).
  23. ^ Twilley, Nicola. "Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  24. ^ Abbott, B.P.; et al. (2016). "Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger". Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 (6): 061102. arXiv:1602.03837. Bibcode:2016PhRvL.116f1102A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102. PMID 26918975. S2CID 124959784.
  25. ^ Naeye, Robert (February 11, 2016). "Gravitational Wave Detection Heralds New Era of Science". Sky and Telescope. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  26. ^ Castelvecchi, Davide; Witze, Alexandra (February 11, 2016). "Einstein's gravitational waves found at last". Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19361. S2CID 182916902. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  27. ^ "Prize Recipient". aps.org.
  28. ^ "Breakthrough Prize – Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded For Detection of Gravitational Waves 100 Years After Albert Einstein Predicted Their Existence". breakthroughprize.org. San Francisco. May 2, 2016. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  29. ^ "2016 Gruber Cosmology Prize Press Release". gruber.yale.edu. The Gruber Foundation. May 4, 2016. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  30. ^ "Shaw Prize 2016". Archived from the original on March 3, 2018. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  31. ^ Prize, The Kavli. "9 Scientific Pioneers Receive The 2016 Kavli Prizes". www.prnewswire.com (Press release).
  32. ^ Harvey Prize 2016
  33. ^ "Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves". Smithsonian Magazine.
  34. ^ "The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics". Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  35. ^ "The Princess of Asturias Foundation". www.fpa.es.
  36. ^ "Group 2: Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics". Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
  37. ^ "Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation". American Astronomical Society.
  38. ^ "AAS Fellows". AAS. Retrieved October 1, 2020.

Further reading

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