Steven Weinberg

The electroweak theory: one force behind light and radioactive decay

• His 1967 paper 'A Model of Leptons' is a central part of the Standard Model, which describes all known particles and every force except gravity. INSPIRE, the physics literature database, lists more than 15,000 citations.^[7],[20]
• The theory's forecasts came true one after another: neutral currents at CERN in 1973, the W and Z particles in 1983, and the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012.^[3],[7],[19]
• Frank Wilczek credited his book Gravitation and Cosmology with breaking down the barrier between particle physics and cosmology, opening a field where a new generation of researchers prospered.^[5]
• The First Three Minutes (1977) brought the physics of the early universe to general readers and was translated into 22 languages.^[9],[12]
• At the University of Texas at Austin he founded a theoretical physics group that grew into one of the leading research centers in the country, and he taught there for nearly four decades.^[8],[9],[12]
• He served briefly as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and wrote that civilization's survival depends on nuclear weapons staying unused.^[8],[12]

We record no quantified claims for Weinberg, matching our profile of his co-laureate Sheldon Glashow. His work explains how nature's forces fit together, and no medicine, crop or machine depends on it closely enough to support an honest count of lives saved or money earned. The weak force it describes does matter in daily life: it starts the chain of reactions that powers the Sun, and it drives the beta decay behind medical radioisotopes and carbon-14 dating. But those effects come from the force itself, not from the theory that explains it. The theory's value is understanding, and the experiments it inspired, from the neutral-current searches at CERN to the Large Hadron Collider's discovery of the Higgs boson. His books, including The First Three Minutes, brought that understanding to millions of general readers. We record no harm: his one known piece of weapons analysis argued against using nuclear weapons.

Fundamental scienceEducation

No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.

• Minor

  Defense consulting during the Vietnam War

  As a JASON member, Weinberg co-wrote the 1967 report Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia with Freeman Dyson, Robert Gomer and S. Courtenay Wright. He later wrote that he wanted nothing to do with the war, that some of the authors were appalled by talk of using nuclear weapons, and that the report found no good nuclear targets there. He said he never learned whether it had any effect.^[12],[13]

• Minor

  The cancelled Super Collider

  Weinberg campaigned for the Superconducting Super Collider, planned for a site in Texas. Congress ended the project after almost two billion dollars had been spent. Weinberg blamed Congress's underfunding, which stretched out the schedule and raised costs, not waste.^[8],[17]

• Minor

  A protest that divided colleagues

  In 2007 he cancelled a lecture at Imperial College London honoring his co-laureate Abdus Salam, citing British boycotts of Israel, which he said he could explain only by antisemitism. His host, Michael Duff, said he was very disappointed and that boycotts, and reactions to them, hurt people other than those intended. Weinberg said he was not calling for a boycott of Britain.^[14],[15]

• —

  Quota

  He grew up while Ivy League colleges used admissions methods designed to limit the number of Jewish students, especially from New York City. In practice they did not admit many more Jews until the 1960s. No source says he was personally rejected.^[21]

• —

  Other

  He came from a family of modest means: his father was a court stenographer and his mother a homemaker, and he was the first in his family to attend college. No source describes real hardship.^[8],[9],[10]

• 2007

  Other

  He said he perceived a widespread anti-Israel and antisemitic current in British opinion, and cancelled a planned lecture in London in protest against boycotts of Israel.^[14],[16]

Weinberg was born in New York City to Jewish parents, Frederick Weinberg, a court stenographer, and Eva (née Israel), a homemaker. A 1979 Jewish Telegraphic Agency report said his father was born in New York, his mother in Germany, and his grandparents came from Romania. He was not religious: he was an outspoken atheist who argued that science weakens religious dogma. But he identified publicly with Jewish causes. He wrote the 1997 essay 'Zionism and Its Adversaries', lectured in Jerusalem and at the Weizmann Institute, which gave him an honorary degree, and in 2007 cancelled a London lecture in protest at what he saw as anti-Israel and antisemitic currents in British opinion.^{[2],[5],[6],[8],[9],[10],[14],[16]}

1. May 3, 1933

   Born in New York City, the only child of Frederick Weinberg, a court stenographer, and Eva (née Israel) Weinberg.^[1],[2],[9]

2. 1950

   Graduates from the Bronx High School of Science, in the same class as Sheldon Glashow.^[5],[11]

3. 1954

   Earns his bachelor's degree at Cornell and marries Louise Goldwasser, whom he met there; spends the next year studying in Copenhagen.^[2],[9]

4. 1957

   Receives his PhD from Princeton under Sam Treiman, then works at Columbia and, from 1959, at Berkeley.^[2]

5. November 1967

   While a visiting professor at MIT, publishes 'A Model of Leptons', uniting the weak and electromagnetic forces.^{[2],[4],[7],[20]}

6. 1973

   CERN physicists observe weak neutral currents, as his theory predicted. He succeeds Julian Schwinger as Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard.^[2],[3]

7. 1977

   Publishes The First Three Minutes, a popular account of the early universe.^[2],[9]

8. October 15, 1979

   Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam for the unified theory of the weak and electromagnetic forces.^[1],[3],[6]

9. 1982

   Moves to the University of Texas at Austin, where he founds its theoretical physics group.^[2],[9],[12]

10. 1983

    Experiments at CERN discover the W and Z particles that the electroweak theory predicted.^[7],[19]

11. May 2007

    Cancels a lecture at Imperial College London in protest at British boycotts of Israel.^[14],[15]

12. 2012

    The Large Hadron Collider discovers the Higgs boson, a particle his 1967 model predicted.^[7],[8]

13. January 2016

    Tells University of Texas faculty he will bar guns from his classroom despite the state's new campus-carry law.^[18]

14. July 23, 2021

    Dies in Austin, Texas, aged 88, having taught until that spring.^[1],[9]

1. 1.Steven Weinberg – Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
2. 2.Steven Weinberg – Biographical · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 1979
3. 3.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 · Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, via NobelPrize.org, 1979
4. 4.Conceptual Foundations of the Unified Theory of Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions (Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1979) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 1979
5. 5.Steven Weinberg (1933–2021), by Frank Wilczek (Nature 596, 183) · Nature, 2021
6. 6.Three Scientists, Two Jewish and One Moslem, Win Nobel Prize · Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 1979
7. 7.A Model of Leptons: a brief history of Steven Weinberg's seminal paper · Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 2017
8. 8.UT Austin Mourns Death of World-Renowned Physicist Steven Weinberg · UT News, University of Texas at Austin, 2021
9. 9.Groundbreaking Nobelist Steven Weinberg Dies at 88, by Dylan Loeb McClain (New York Times obituary, reprinted) · UC Berkeley Department of Physics, 2021
10. 10.Steven Weinberg (1933–2021), by Rohini M. Godbole and Urjit Yajnik (Current Science 121, 719–722) · arXiv, 2021
11. 11.Sheldon Glashow – Biographical · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 1979
12. 12.What is JASON? Author Steven Weinberg (commentary on Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia) · Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
13. 13.Essentially Annihilated: What is JASON? · Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
14. 14.Jewish laureate calls off UK visit, by Melanie Newman · Times Higher Education, 2007
15. 15.Physicist Who Refused to Lecture in U.K.: I'm Not Calling for Boycott, by Charlotte Hallé · Haaretz, 2007
16. 16.Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, celebrated scientific mind, dies, 88, by Aaron Reich · The Jerusalem Post, 2021
17. 17.The Crisis of Big Science, by Steven Weinberg · The New York Review of Books, 2012
18. 18.This Nobel Laureate Became an Unlikely Force in Texas' Campus Carry Debate · KUT Radio (Texas Standard), 2016
19. 19.The Z boson · CERN
20. 20.A Model of Leptons, by S. Weinberg (Physical Review Letters 19, 1264–1266, 1967) · INSPIRE-HEP, 1967
21. 21.Intellectuals at the Gate (Susan H. Greenberg interviews Mark Oppenheimer on the Ivy League's Jewish quotas) · Inside Higher Ed, 2022