HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Sheldon Lee Glashow (, ; born December 5, 1932) is a
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
-winning
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
theoretical
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
. He is the Metcalf
Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...
of
Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and
Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
at
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, and is a member of the Board of Sponsors for the '' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists''.


Birth and education

Sheldon Glashow was born on December 5, 1932 in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, to
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
immigrants from
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
, Bella (née Rubin) and Lewis Gluchovsky, a plumber.Sheldon Glashow – Britannica Encyclopedia
Britannica.com. Retrieved on 2012-07-27.
He graduated from
Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Sp ...
in 1950. Glashow was in the same graduating class as Steven Weinberg, whose own research, independent of Glashow's, would result in Glashow, Weinberg, and
Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabis, Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physici ...
sharing the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (see below).Glashow's autobiography
. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2012-07-27.
Glashow received a
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in 1954 and a PhD degree in physics from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
in 1959 under Nobel-laureate physicist Julian Schwinger. Afterwards, Glashow became a NSF fellow at
NORDITA The Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, or NORDITA, or Nordita ( da, Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Fysik), is an international organisation for research in theoretical physics. It was established as Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Atomfys ...
and met
Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...
, who convinced him to become a research fellow at the
California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
. Glashow then became an assistant professor at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
before joining the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
where he was an associate professor from 1962 to 1966. He joined the Harvard physics department as a professor in 1966, and was named Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics in 1979; he became emeritus in 2000. Glashow has been a visiting scientist at
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gen ...
, and professor at
Aix-Marseille University Aix-Marseille University (AMU; french: Aix-Marseille Université; formally incorporated as ''Université d'Aix-Marseille'') is a public research university located in the Provence region of southern France. It was founded in 1409 when Louis II o ...
, MIT, Brookhaven Laboratory,
Texas A&M Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
, the
University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...
, and
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
.


Research

In 1961, Glashow extended
electroweak unification In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very differe ...
models due to Schwinger by including a short range
neutral current Weak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the Z boson. The discovery of weak neutral currents was a significant step towar ...
, the Z0. The resulting symmetry structure that Glashow proposed, SU(2) ×
U(1) In mathematics, the circle group, denoted by \mathbb T or \mathbb S^1, is the multiplicative group of all complex numbers with absolute value 1, that is, the unit circle in the complex plane or simply the unit complex numbers. \mathbb T = \. ...
, forms the basis of the accepted theory of the
electroweak In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very differe ...
interactions. For this discovery, Glashow along with Steven Weinberg and
Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabis, Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physici ...
, was awarded the 1979
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
. In collaboration with James Bjorken, Glashow was the first to predict a fourth quark, the
charm quark The charm quark, charmed quark or c quark (from its symbol, c) is the third-most massive of all quarks, a type of elementary particle. Charm quarks are found in hadrons, which are subatomic particles made of quarks. Examples of hadrons containin ...
, in 1964. This was at a time when 4
leptons In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin (spin ) that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons or muons), and neutra ...
had been discovered but only 3 quarks proposed. The development of their work in 1970, the GIM mechanism showed that the two quark pairs: (d.s), (u,c), would largely cancel out flavor changing neutral currents, which had been observed experimentally at far lower levels than theoretically predicted on the basis of 3 quarks only. The prediction of the charm quark also removed a technical disaster for any quantum field theory with unequal numbers of quarks and leptons — an anomaly — where classical field theory symmetries fail to carry over into the quantum theory. In 1973, Glashow and Howard Georgi proposed the first
grand unified theory A Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is a model in particle physics in which, at high energies, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model comprising the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces are merged into a single force. Although this ...
. They discovered how to fit the gauge forces in the
standard model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces ( electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. It ...
into an SU(5) group, and the quarks and leptons into two simple representations. Their theory qualitatively predicted the general pattern of
coupling constant In physics, a coupling constant or gauge coupling parameter (or, more simply, a coupling), is a number that determines the strength of the force exerted in an interaction. Originally, the coupling constant related the force acting between two ...
running, with plausible assumptions, it gave rough mass ratio values between third generation leptons and quarks, and it was the first indication that the law of
Baryon number In particle physics, the baryon number is a strictly conserved additive quantum number of a system. It is defined as ::B = \frac\left(n_\text - n_\bar\right), where ''n''q is the number of quarks, and ''n'' is the number of antiquarks. Baryo ...
is inexact, that the
proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...
is unstable. This work was the foundation for all future unifying work. Glashow shared the 1977
J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize and Medal was awarded by the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, from 1969, until 1984. Established in memory of US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the award consisted of a medal, certifi ...
with
Feza Gürsey Feza Gürsey (; April 7, 1921 – April 13, 1992) was a Turkish mathematician and physicist. Among his most prominent contributions to theoretical physics, his works on the Chiral model and on SU(6) are most popular. Early life Feza Gürse ...
.


Criticism of superstring theory

Glashow is a skeptic of superstring theory due to its lack of experimentally testable predictions. He had campaigned to keep string theorists out of the
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
physics department, though the campaign failed.Jim Holt (2006-10-02)
"Unstrung"
, The New Yorker. Retrieved on 2012-07-27.
About ten minutes into "String's the Thing", the second episode of ''
The Elegant Universe ''The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory'' is a book by Brian Greene published in 1999, which introduces string and superstring theory, and provides a comprehensive though non-technical assess ...
'' TV series, he describes superstring theory as a discipline distinct from physics, saying "...you may call it a tumor, if you will...".


Personal life

Glashow is married to Joan Shirley Alexander. They have four children.
Lynn Margulis Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Ma ...
was Joan's sister, making
Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...
his former brother-in-law. Daniel Kleitman, who was another doctoral student of Julian Schwinger, is also his brother-in-law, through Joan's other sister, Sharon. In 2003, he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the
Humanist Manifesto ''Humanist Manifesto'' is the title of three manifestos laying out a humanist worldview. They are the original '' Humanist Manifesto'' (1933, often referred to as Humanist Manifesto I), the ''Humanist Manifesto II'' (1973), and ''Humanism and I ...
. Glashow has described himself as a "practising
atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
" and a Democrat. Glashow is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the
Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...
’s
Office of Science The Office of Science is a component of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The Office of Science is the lead federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for energy and the Nation’s largest supporter of basic research in t ...
, the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
, and the
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
.


Works

*''The Charm of Physics'' (1991) *''From Alchemy to Quarks: The Study of Physics as a Liberal Art'' (1994) *''Interactions: A Journey Through the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of this World'' (1988) *''First Workshop on Grand Unification: New England Center, University of New Hampshire, April 10–12, 1980'' edited with Paul H. Frampton and Asim Yildiz (1980) *''Third Workshop on Grand Unification, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 15–17, 1982'' edited with Paul H. Frampton and Hendrik van Dam (1982)
Desperately Seeking Superstrings?
with
Paul Ginsparg Paul Henry Ginsparg (born January 1, 1955) is a physicist. He developed the arXiv.org e-print archive. Education He is a graduate of Syosset High School in Syosset, New York. He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in phy ...
in ''Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory'' (2008)


Awards and honors

*
J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize and Medal was awarded by the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, from 1969, until 1984. Established in memory of US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the award consisted of a medal, certifi ...
(1977) *
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
(1979) * Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...
(1980) *Member of the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
(2002)


See also

*
Neutral current Weak neutral current interactions are one of the ways in which subatomic particles can interact by means of the weak force. These interactions are mediated by the Z boson. The discovery of weak neutral currents was a significant step towar ...
*
Tadpole A tadpole is the larval stage in the biological life cycle of an amphibian. Most tadpoles are fully aquatic, though some species of amphibians have tadpoles that are terrestrial. Tadpoles have some fish-like features that may not be found ...
*
Weak hypercharge In the Standard Model of electroweak interactions of particle physics, the weak hypercharge is a quantum number relating the electric charge and the third component of weak isospin. It is frequently denoted Y_\mathsf and corresponds to the gauge ...
*
List of Jewish Nobel laureates Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 900 individuals, of whom at least 20% were Jews. * * * * * * * * The number of Jews receiving Nobel prizes has been the subject of some attention.* * *"Jews rank high among winners of Nobel, but why ...


References

Notes


External links

* * * including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1979 ''Towards a Unified Theory – Threads in a Tapestry''
Sheldon Lee Glashow
on www.nobel-winners.com



* ttp://physics.bu.edu/people/show/47 Sheldon Glashow Boston University Physics Department* ttp://69.16.229.107/glashow Sheldon Glashow Photos
Interview with Glashow About Contemporary Physics and Winning the Nobel Prize
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Glashow, Sheldon Lee 1932 births Living people Nobel laureates in Physics American Nobel laureates Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Jewish American atheists American humanists 21st-century American physicists New York (state) Democrats Boston University faculty The Bronx High School of Science alumni Cornell University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Harvard University faculty Jewish humanists Jewish American physicists American people of Russian-Jewish descent Theoretical physicists Particle physicists People associated with CERN Scientists from New York (state) Members of the American Philosophical Society