Steven Weinberg was a physicist whose research on elementary particles contributed to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles within atomic nuclei. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for these seminal findings.
Steven proposed a model of unification of electromagnetism and the nuclear weak forces involved in nuclear decay - now known as the electroweak unification theory - using the spontaneous symmetry breaking to explain the mass of force carriers. This model predicted the existence of the Higgs boson and led to the development of the full standard model of elementary particle theory.
Steven's paper, in which he presented his theory, is one of the most cited theoretical works in high-energy physics. In 1979, he reworked his theory to incorporate renormalisation, an approach that enabled the development of a theory of quantum gravity. Steven was the author of, amongst others, Gravitation and Cosmology (1972) and The Quantum Theory of Fields (1995) - two of the most influential books in their fields.
Professor Steven Weinberg ForMemRS died on 23 July 2021.
Awards
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Nobel Prize in Physics
Jointly to Sheldon Lee Glashow and Abdus Salam for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current.
