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Rainer " Rai " Weiss ( / waɪs / WYSSE, German: [vaɪs]; born September 29, 1932) is a German-born American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT and an adjunct professor at LSU.
- Pioneering laser interferometric gravitational wave observation
Rainer Weiss Biographical . M y father came from a well-off German Jewish family in Berlin with connections to the Rathenau family that had begun the Allgemeine Electrische Gesellschaft (AEG). As a young man he had become an ardent and idealistic communist.
May 9, 2024 · Rainer Weiss (born September 29, 1932, Berlin, Germany) is a German-born American physicist who was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and for the first direct detection of gravity waves.
Born: 29 September 1932, Berlin, Germany. Affiliation at the time of the award: LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration, ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. Prize motivation: “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. Prize share: 1/2.
Oct 6, 2022 · Weiss’s path shows how talented experimental physicists are formed, how new scientific ideas can come from unexpected directions, and how sheer perseverance is needed to bring a large-scale physics experiment to fruition. Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany on 29 September 1932, during the Nazis’ rise to power.
Dr. Weiss is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and he is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and Sigma Xi.
He spent several years as a post doctoral scientist with Robert Dicke at Princeton to search for scalar gravitational waves using the Earth as the sensor. In 1964, he started a research program as an MIT faculty member.
