Rainer weiss biography

His father was a physician and his mother was an actress. His family was forced out of Germany by the Nazis since his father was Jewish and a Communist. Rai, his mother and father fled to Rainer weiss biography, Czechoslovakia. In a sister was born in Prague.

Writing this at 73 and having shed the august responsibilities of a full fledged faculty, it is natural to be retrospective rather than to look at prospects. Currently working on the LIGO project, a joint Caltech and MIT effort, to observe gravitational waves and use them to study gravitation and astrophysics. My role now is to be the equivalent of a grad student. Very much enjoy this. Over the years have worked on cosmological studies with Robert Dicke and David Wilkinson at Princeton. If you are really interested, you can read the standard stuff.

Rainer weiss biography

Thank you for registering with Physics World If you'd like to change your details at any time, please visit My account. Now aged 90 he talks to Sidney Perkowitz about his life and work, from the unexpected sources for scientific inspiration to the challenges of large-scale experiments. Down-to-earth, unassuming, and keen to discuss his research, physicist Rainer Weiss is remarkably easy to talk to. Despite portending their existence, Einstein himself doubted that these waves would ever be observable because they are extremely weak. It took decades of effort from Weiss, his Nobel colleagues and many others, and the discovery represented a pinnacle in physics that also ushered in a new era in astronomy. Since the advent of observational astronomy, we had been scanning the universe mostly by observing first visible light, then a broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Now gravitational waves were able to provide a new way of probing many cosmic phenomena. Only seven years after the birth of gravitational astronomy, it has already produced much valuable new knowledge. Each of the three Nobel laureates followed his own arc toward these successes. At the behest of his Christian wife, whose family had some local contacts, Frederick was released and sent to Prague. Once Rainer was born, Gertrude travelled with her new baby to join Frederick in Czechoslovakia, where the couple had another child, Sybille, in

His result was remarkable: with arms several kilometres long, it would be possible to measure changes in distance as tiny as 10 —18 m — barely one thousandth of the size of a proton — as a passing gravitational wave rainer weiss biography space to cause a strain of 10 — So I struggled being at best a day ahead of the students, rainer weiss biography. The group did extremely well demonstrating a 3 meter prototype and later a 30 meter system showing the anticipated scaling.

He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. 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. His mother, an actress, was Christian. The family fled first to Prague , but Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement caused them to flee again; the philanthropic Stix family of St. Louis helped them obtain visas to enter the United States. He studied at MIT , dropped out during his junior year, [14] but eventually returned to receive his S.

He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. 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. His mother, an actress, was Christian. The family fled first to Prague , but Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement caused them to flee again; the philanthropic Stix family of St. Louis helped them obtain visas to enter the United States. He studied at MIT , dropped out during his junior year, [14] but eventually returned to receive his S.

Rainer weiss biography

After serving as an assistant professor of physics at Tufts University and then a research associate at Princeton University, he returned to MIT and has been there ever since. Weiss has contributed to a variety of scientific fields, including atomic physics, laser physics and astronomy. He co-founded LIGO with Thorne and later Drever, having laid the foundations for the project in with a paper detailing how an interferometer could distinguish gravitational waves from background noise. He has continued to contribute to nearly all elements of the experiment since then. National Academy of Sciences. After receiving the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for the direct detection of gravitational waves, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this scientific achievement. Changing our Understanding of the Universe. Jump to content. Rainer Weiss. Rainer Weiss Photo: Peter Bagde.

Webapp fut

Anything you can do to help advance students, because they are our future. Scientific career. Dicke almost single handedly had revitalized experimental relativity after the Chapel Hill meeting in Registration is free, quick and easy. When Rai was 21 years-old, he visited Mrs. In I was asked to chair a committee to determine the role of the space programme in cosmology and gravitation. Read Edit View history. He is known for his works in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Each mass equipped with a synchronized clock to time the light travel from one mass to the other. Then, after a movie theater in Brooklyn had a fire behind the screen, he was able to acquire broken but repairable loud speakers and began making high-fidelity equipment.

He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO.

He ended up flunking out of MIT. In I went back to the gedanken experiment to see if it could be converted into a real experiment. Nelson , Raymond N. Gravitational waves from merging neutron stars will deepen our knowledge of stellar evolution and dense nuclear matter. After a gravitational wave—a ripple from the distant part of the universe—was detected by the LIGO team, Rai received a number of awards for the discovery. But when the Munich Agreement allowed German troops to enter Czechoslovakia, the family had to escape once more. Wilson , Roger Angel David C. Reset your password. Based on the success of the prototypes, the credibility the Caltech decision gave the field, and my difficulties to have graduate student PhD theses accepted, I proposed to the NSF to carry out a feasibility study with industry to design and construct a long baseline interferometric detector system with sufficient sensitivity to intersect estimates for the gravitational waves incident on the earth from plausible astronomical sources. The committee recommended the LIGO project go forward without compromise and with the potential capability to make a detection. San Francisco. He brought General Relativity back from mathematics into physics. Most did not get visas to leave. But that did not immediately work out either.