Rainer Weiss
| Rainer Weiss | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
September 29, 1932 Berlin, Germany |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Physics, Laser physics, Experimental Gravitation, Cosmic Background Measurements |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Alma mater | MIT |
| Thesis | Stark Effect and Hyperfine Structure of Hydrogen Fluoride (1962) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jerrold R. Zacharias |
| Doctoral students | Shaoul Ezekiel, Nelson Christensen, Peter Fritschel, Michelle Stephens, Joseph Kovalik, Joseph Giaime, Nergis Mavalvala, Partha Saha, Brett Bochner, Brian Lantz, Julien Sylvestre, Ryan Lawrence, Rana Adhikari |
| Known for | Pioneering laser interferometric gravitational wave observation. |
| Notable awards |
Einstein Prize (2007) by American Physical Society Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016) Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016) Shaw Prize (2016) Kavli Prize (2016) |
Rainer "Rai" Weiss (/vaɪs/; German: [vaɪs]; born September 29, 1932) is an American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. Rainer Weiss was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.
Rainer Weiss was born on 29 September 1932 in Berlin, Germany. Fleeing Nazi rule, his family moved first to Prague, in late 1932, and then to the United States, in 1938; his youth was spent in New York City, where he attended Columbia Grammar School. He studied at MIT, and after dropping out in his junior year returned to receive his B.S. in 1955 and Ph.D. in 1962 from Jerrold Zacharias. He taught at Tufts University in 1960–62, was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University from 1962–64, and then joined the faculty at MIT in 1964.
Weiss brought two fields of fundamental physics research from birth to maturity: characterization of the cosmic background radiation, and interferometric gravitational wave observation.
He made pioneering measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and then was co-founder and science advisor of the NASA COBE (microwave background) satellite. In 2006, with John C. Mather, he and the COBE team received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology.
...
Wikipedia