The Department of Physics at the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has pro ...

has over 30 faculty members. It offers undergraduate academic programs including B.S. in physics, applied physics, and physics education and graduate programs in physics and health physics. Many notable physicists have both taught and studied at IIT including

Nobel Prize for 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 " ...

laureates Leon M. Lederman and

Jack Steinberger Jack Steinberger (born Hans Jakob Steinberger; May 25, 1921December 12, 2020) was a German-born American physicist noted for his work with neutrinos, the subatomic particles considered to be elementary constituents of matter. He was a recipient ...

Academics

Undergraduate academics

Bachelor of Science degrees are given in: Applied Physics, Astrophysics, Physics, and Physics Education. There are also Co-terminal Bachelor of Science degree programs in Physics/Master of Science in Physics and in Physics/Master of Health Physics.

Graduate academics

Master's degrees are given in: Health Physics, Applied Physics, and Physics. The Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physics is also offered.

Current research

Current research includes: * Involvement in the Double Chooz collaboration. The experiment is intended to measure the θ₁₃ neutrino mixing angle. * The

MINOS In Greek mythology, Minos (; grc-gre, Μίνως, ) was a King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eat ...

experiment at Fermilab which studies neutrino oscillations. * The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. The experiment performed a precision measurement of the θ₁₃ neutrino mixing angle. * The MicroBooNE experiment. A short baseline accelerator neutrino experiment for the development of LAr technologies. Plan to study the MiniBooNE low-energy excess and perform cross section measurements of neutrino interactions in LAr. * The

PROSPECT Prospect may refer to: General * Prospect (marketing), a marketing term describing a potential customer * Prospect (sports), any player whose rights are owned by a professional team, but who has yet to play a game for the team * Prospect (mining ...

experiment. A short baseline reactor antineutrino experiment searching for evidence of sterile neutrinos and a precision measurement of the U235 spectrum. * International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment

History

Faculty timeline

Notable people

Leon M. Lederman, winner of the 1988

, discoverer of the bottom quark, and Director Emeritus of

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy parti ...

was a professor at IIT. Robert F. Christy taught at IIT before going on to be a part of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

. His insights greatly simplified the design of a plutonium based warhead; the solid-core plutonium model is often referred to as the "Christy gadget".

Lee De Forest Lee de Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor and a fundamentally important early pioneer in electronics. He invented the first electronic device for controlling current flow; the three-element " Audion" triode ...

, one of "the fathers of the electronic age" and the man who brought sound to motion pictures was an IIT physics faculty member. The world's first radio astronomer, Grote Reber, is an IIT alum. Watts Humphrey, "Father of software quality", earned a Masters in physics from IIT.

studied at IIT before dropping out to support his family. He later won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physics. Sidney Coleman, best known for his contributions to

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles a ...

, received his B.S. from IIT. Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow says of Coleman, ""He's not a Stephen Hawking; he has virtually no visibility outside. But within the community of theoretical physicists, he's kind of a major god. He is the physicist's physicist." Raymond A. Serway, author of several undergraduate physics textbooks, received his doctorate from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

References

{{Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Physics departments in the United States