Steven Weinberg
Weinberg, Steven (1933-), an American physicist, made important contributions to the understanding of elementary-particle physics. For his achievements, Weinberg, shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics with physicists Sheldon Lee Glashow of the United States and Abdus Salam of Pakistan.
For nearly half a century, physicists had recognized the existence of four forces governing nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. In the 1960's, Weinberg helped develop a theory that unified electromagnetism and the weak force. Electromagnetism produces phenomena such as sunlight, while the weak force works at short distances within the nucleus and causes some forms of radioactive decay.
In 1957, Weinberg demonstrated with Salam that the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force are variations of a single underlying force that is now called the electroweak force. Through these forces, subatomic particles (particles smaller than atoms) interact with each other. The electromagnetic force holds molecules together and keeps electrons in orbit around an atomic nucleus. The weak force causes radioactive decay in the nucleus.
Weinberg also wrote The First Three Minutes (1977), a book popular with general readers.
After graduating from Cornell University in 1954, he spent a year in Copenhagen studying at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute). He earned a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1957.
From 1957 to 1973, he held teaching positions at Columbia University, the University of California in Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1973, he became Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard University and a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In 1982, he became Josey Regental Professor of Science at the University of Texas in Austin. He is a member of the Royal Society of London.