| | 121 | Name: | Dr. Victor F. Weisskopf | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1966 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | April 22, 2002 | | | | |
| 122 | Name: | Dr. John Archibald Wheeler | | | Institution: | Princeton University & University of Texas at Austin & Center for Theoretical Physics | | | Year Elected: | 1951 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1911 | | | Death Date: | April 13, 2008 | | | | |
| 123 | Name: | Dr. Eugene P. Wigner | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1944 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1902 | | | Death Date: | 1/1/95 | | | | |
| 124 | Name: | Dr. Frank Wilczek | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world's most original and productive theoretical physicists. At the age of 21, with David Gross, he developed the theoretical framework for what was to become Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory of the forces that bind quarks and gluons together to form particles such as the proton. It was for this work that he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics. In addition to his technical contributions he has frequently published articles for other physicists explaining the subtleties of complicated theories, as well as numerous articles for the lay person. Dr. Wilczek received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 and taught there until 1981 when he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1989-2000, and since 2000 he has served as the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2014 he was honored with the Award for Essays from the Gravity Research Foundation. | |
| 125 | Name: | Dr. Robert R. Wilson | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 1969 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | January 18, 2000 | | | | |
| 126 | Name: | Dr. Kenneth G. Wilson | | | Institution: | Ohio State University | | | Year Elected: | 1984 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | Death Date: | June 15, 2013 | | | | | | |
Kenneth Wilson was born in 1936 in Waltham, Massachusetts, the son of a very distinguished chemist who taught at Harvard University throughout his career. Dr. Wilson was an undergraduate at Harvard College and obtained his doctorate in 1961 from the California Institute of Technology, where he was a student of Murray Gell-Mann. He was then a Junior Fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows before joining Cornell University's Department of Physics in 1963. He held a professorship there beginning in 1970 and became the James A. Weeks Chair in Physical Sciences in 1974. Dr. Wilson became the Director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (Cornell Theory Center) - one of five national supercomputer centers created by the National Science Foundation - in 1985. In 1988 he moved to The Ohio State University's Department of Physics, where he became the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor. From 1991-96 he was co-principal investigator on Ohio's Project Discovery, one of the National Science Foundation's Statewide Systemic Initiatives. Dr. Wilson co-directed Learning by Redesign. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1975. In 1980 he shared Israel's Wolf Prize in Physics with Michael Fisher and Leo Kadanoff. The ultimate recognition of his achievements in physics came with his 1982 award of the Nobel Prize in Physics, presented for discoveries he made in understanding how bulk matter undergoes "phase transition", i.e. sudden and profound structural changes resulting from variations in environmental conditions. Dr. Wilson's background prior to educational reform ranged from elementary particle theory and condensed matter physics (critical phenomena and the Kondo problem) to quantum chemistry and computer science. He also helped to popularize C++ among theoretical physicists. He became emeritus from Ohio State University in 2006 and moved to Gray, Maine. He died June 15, 2013, at the age of 77. | |
| 127 | Name: | Dr. Edward Witten | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Edward Witten received a Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1976. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in 1977 and a Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows, from 1977-80. He was professor of physics at Princeton University from 1980-87 before joining the Institute for Advanced Study as a professor in the School of Natural Sciences in 1987. He also served for two years as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. Edward Witten's recent research is at the interface of elementary particle physics and geometry. He has revolutionized the study of three and four dimensional spaces, using insights from quantum mechanics. Invariants of knots in three space, obtained from quantum field theory, is a noteworthy example. He made important contributions to the quantization of gauge theories and is a world leader in developing string theory. Understanding the geometric concepts in terms of which string theory should be formulated is his main goal. Dr. Witten is a brilliant lecturer and an inspiration to a new generation of mathematical physicists. He was a MacArthur Fellowship recipient in 1982 and has also been honored with the Einstein Medal of the Einstein Society of Bern, Switzerland (1985); the Dirac Medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (1986); the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1986); the Fields Medal of the International Union of Mathematicians (1990); the Klein Medal from Stockholm University (1998); the Dannie Heineman Prize from the American Institute of Physics (1998); the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics from Northwestern University (2000); the Clay Research Award (2001); The Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics (2010); the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010); the Solomon Lefschetz Medal by the Mathematical Society of Mexico (2011), the inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize established by Yuri Milner (2012), the Kyoto Prize (2014), and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2016). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1993. | |
| 128 | Name: | Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 1981 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | 2/16/97 | | | | |
| 129 | Name: | Dr. Chen Ning Yang | | | Institution: | State University of New York | | | Year Elected: | 1964 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1922 | | | | | | |
At age 35, Chinese-American physicist Chen Ning Yang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Tsung-Dao Lee, for the theory that weak force interactions between elementary particles do not have parity (mirror reflection) symmetry. He is also well known for his collaboration with Robert Mills in developing a gauge theory of a new class; such "Yang-Mills" theories are now a fundamental part of the standard model of particle physics. Born in China, Dr. Yang received his Master of Science degree from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he worked with Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi. In 1949 he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study and in 1965 to the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he served as Albert Einstein Professor of Physics until his retirement (now Emeritus) in 1999, when he returned to Tsinghua University. Dr. Yang is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His many honors include the National Medal of Science (1986) and the King Faisal International Prize (2001). In 1993 Dr. Yang was presented with the American Philosophical Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences. The citation read "for profound and original contributions to physics - especially the discovery of the non-conservation of parity and of non-Abelian gauge fields which laid the foundations for new intellectual structures - and a love of mathematical beauty which helped him reveal the mysterious working of nature." | |
| 130 | Name: | Dr. Yakov B. Zel'Dovich | | | Year Elected: | 1979 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | 12/2/87 | | | | |
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