Rainer weiss biography

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.

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 Prague, Czechoslovakia. In a sister was born in Prague. In , after Chamberlain appeased Hitler by effectively giving him Czechoslovakia, the family was able to obtain visas to enter the United States through the Stix Family in St. Louis, who were giving bond to professional Jewish emigrants. When Rai was 21 years-old, he visited Mrs.

Rainer weiss biography

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 taught at Tufts University from to , was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University from to , and then joined the faculty at MIT in 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 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. 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 s, following earlier work by Robert L.

Physics Laser physics Rainer weiss biography gravitation Cosmic background measurements. He was so grateful for what Jerrold Zacharias had done for him that in many ways this gift is a tribute to him. Physics Laser physics Experimental gravitation Cosmic background measurements.

He is known for his works 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. Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk.

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

Suggestions or feedback? Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT. Previous image Next image. Weiss won half of the prize, with the other half of the award shared by Kip S. Thorne, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at Caltech, and Barry C.

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Very much enjoy this. World Scientific. Retrieved October 3, 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. I decided to go to Evanston, Illinois to salvage it despite the fact that I was enrolled as a student at MIT and the gentle but firm messages that end meant end. The committee also urged a single director to run the project. The interferometer operated at the quantum limit. Currently working on the LIGO project, a joint Caltech and MIT effort, to observe gravitational waves and use them to study gravitation and astrophysics. Nelson , Raymond N. Sky and Telescope. Bruce Allen. A committee was assembled to study: the state of the prototype development, the industrial capabilities in optics and lasers, the engineering of the vacuum and vibration isolation systems. Science Magazine. I could also not admit to the Department that I knew very little of the formal theory. Elledge , Harry F.

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.

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. I could also not admit to the Department that I knew very little of the formal theory. Also at that time he met his wife Rebecca, a graduate of Radcliffe College, who was working as a botanist for Harvard. He admits that MIT scared him when he received the course catalog of everything he had to take, all listed in numbers. The gravitation and General Relativity bug had bitten. A few years later, on 17 August , aLIGO made the first ever observation of gravitational waves from two merging neutron stars the Virgo gravitational wave detector in Italy also participated. With sensitivity enhanced fold, on 14 September , aLIGO made the first ever observation of gravitational waves which came from two merging black holes — a miraculous discovery as the machine was still being calibrated for the first official run Physics World October p In September of the family took a vacation to the Tatra mountains in Slovakia. S2CID Before his report to the committee, we spent the night together talking about ideas a new experimental group in gravitation at Caltech might work on. Weiss was raised in New York City, where he initially attended public school. In I was asked to chair a committee to determine the role of the space programme in cosmology and gravitation.