Rainer Weiss

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Rainer Weiss
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Michael Hauser, Photographer

Rainer (Rai) Weiss is professor of physics emeritus at MIT.

Early life and education

Rainer Weiss was born on 29 September 1932 in Berlin, Germany.[1] Fleeing political unrest, 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, receiving 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.

Achievements

Weiss has 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 an intellectual leader of the NASA COBE (microwave background) satellite.

Weiss also invented the interferometric gravitational wave detector, and co-founded the NSF LIGO (gravitational-wave detection) Project. Both of these efforts couple remarkable challenges in instrument science with physics of the deepest importance for our understanding of the Universe.

Weiss contributed to LIGO through:

  • his inception of the measurement technique
  • recognition and delineation of the experimental challenges
  • building of early prototype instruments
  • leadership of the effort to propose full-scale observatories
  • engineering of the world's largest ultra-high vacuum system to house the instruments
  • commissioning of the initial detectors
  • forming and first leadership of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration
  • mentorship of many of the physicists leading the field.

Selected publications

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References

  1. Weiss CV
  • Mather, John and John Boslough, The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe, ISBN 978-0-465-01576-4
  • Bartusiak, M., Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time, ISBN 978-0-425-18620-6

External links