Weinberg, Steven

(1933– ) physicist; born in New York City. He was an instructor at Columbia University (1957–59) before moving to the University of California: Berkeley (1959–69). In 1967 he produced a gauge symmetry theory that correctly predicted that electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces are identical at extremely high energies. The theory also predicted the weak neutral current, confirmed by particle accelerator experiments in 1973. As this theory was also independently developed by Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, and extended by Sheldon Glashow, all three scientists shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. Weinberg pursued his theoretical investigations in the unification of the fundamental forces of the universe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1969–73) and Harvard (1973–83). He joined the University of Texas (1982) and concurrently became a consultant at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory (1983).

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fundamental forces

References in periodicals archive

(11.) Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (Pantheon, New York, 1992), 255-256.

Divine action and divine purpose

This point was brought home forcibly by Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg's choice of title for his seminal book on modern cosmology: The First Three Minutes.

On contradictions between Torah and science: the creation of the universe

This reviewer would agree with one caveat, expressed by Steven Weinberg in his earlier essay: "One of the greatest achievements of science has been, if not to make it possible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious.

Science and Religion: the experts weigh in

[one] which has failed everywhere," as eminent physicist Steven Weinberg wrote recently in The Atlantic Monthly.

Teaching Utopia

Douglas Bernheim, NBER and Stanford University; Jonathan Skinner, NBER and Dartmouth College; and Steven Weinberg, Stanford university, "What Accounts for the Variation in Retirement Wealth Among U.S.

Behavioral macroeconomics discussed in Cambridge

By Steven Weinberg. Published by Vintage Books, 1992, 340 pp., ISBN 0 679 74408 8 (paper)

Dreams of a Final Theory

In 1968, however, three, men, the American physicists Steven Weinberg (b.1933) and Sheldon Lee Glashow (b.

Electroweak interaction

But sometime in 1986 I picked up the courage to ask Salam the obvious question: both he, who thought himself a believer, and Steven Weinberg, an avowed atheist, had worked independently on unifying two of nature's four fundamental forces and yet had arrived at precisely the same conclusions.

Ramanujan and Salam what inspired them?

There's no shortage of smart, literate physicists--think Lisa Randall, Steven Weinberg or Brian Greene--whose popular writings bring the universe into sharp focus.

The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos

After winning the Nobel prize for physics in 1979 with American scientists Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow, he was banned from lecturing at public universities under pressure from right-wing students and religious conservatives.

Why Pakistan abandoned its Nobel laureate

He reportedly received a string of international prizes and honours for his groundbreaking work in the world of subatomic physics, while in 1979, he shared the Nobel Prize with Steven Weinberg for his research on the Standard Model of particle physics, which theorized that fundamental forces govern the overall dynamics of the universe.

'God-particle' Nobel Prize winning Pakistani physicist shunned in own country over religious beliefs