Einstein Prize (2007) Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016) Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016) Shaw Prize (2016) Kavli Prize (2016) Harvey Prize (2016) Princess of Asturias Award (2017) Nobel Prize in Physics (2017)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Princeton University Tufts University
Thesis
Stark Effect and Hyperfine Structure of Hydrogen Fluoride(1962)
Doctoral advisor
Jerrold R. Zacharias
Doctoral students
Nergis Mavalvala Philip K. Chapman Rana X. Adhikari
Other notable students
Bruce Allen Sarah Veatch
Rainer Weiss during Nobel Prize press conference in Stockholm, December 2017
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. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.[1][2][3]
In 2017, Weiss was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".[4][5][6][7]
Weiss has helped realize a number of challenging experimental tests of fundamental physics. He is a member of the Fermilab Holometer experiment, which uses a 40m laser interferometer to measure properties of space and time at quantum scale and provide Planck-precision tests of quantum holographic fluctuation.[8][9]
^Lars Brink (June 2, 2014). Nobel Lectures in Physics (2006–2010). World Scientific. pp. 25–. ISBN 978-981-4612-70-8.
^"NASA and COBE Scientists Win Top Cosmology Prize". NASA. 2006. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2016.
^Weiss, Rainer (1980). "Measurements of the Cosmic Background Radiation". Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.18: 489–535. Bibcode:1980ARA&A..18..489W. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.18.090180.002421.
^"The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017". The Nobel Foundation. October 3, 2017. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
^Rincon, Paul; Amos, Jonathan (October 3, 2017). "Einstein's waves win Nobel Prize". BBC News. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
^Overbye, Dennis (October 3, 2017). "2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Black Hole Researchers". The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
^Kaiser, David (October 3, 2017). "Learning from Gravitational Waves". The New York Times. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
^Emily Tapp (October 6, 2017). "Why we built the Holometer". IOP, Classical and Quantum Gravity journal. Retrieved October 22, 2017.
^Aaron Chou; et al. (2017). "The Holometer: an instrument to probe Planckian quantum geometry". Class. Quantum Grav.34 (6): 065005. arXiv:1611.08265. Bibcode:2017CQGra..34f5005C. doi:10.1088/1361-6382/aa5e5c. S2CID 119065032.
Rainer "Rai" Weiss (/waɪs/ WYSSE, German: [vaɪs]; born September 29, 1932) is a German-born American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational...
contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with RainerWeiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for...
funded by the NSF. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to RainerWeiss, Kip Thorne and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO...
Washington. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was subsequently awarded to RainerWeiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish for their role in the direct detection of...
waves. In 2017, Barish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with RainerWeiss and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the...
As a graduate student at MIT, she conducted her doctoral work under RainerWeiss, where Mavalvala developed a prototype laser interferometer for detecting...
Drever died on 7 March 2017, aged 85, seven months before his colleagues RainerWeiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their...
Ohsumi Bob Dylan Juan Manuel Santos Oliver Hart; Bengt R. Holmström 2017 RainerWeiss; Barry Barish; Kip Thorne Jacques Dubochet; Joachim Frank; Richard Henderson...
Clifford Shull (1994) Wolfgang Ketterle (2001) Frank Wilczek (2004) RainerWeiss (2017) See also Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
and RainerWeiss, received the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the observation of gravitational waves. Drever, Thorne, Weiss, and...
John B. Goodenough*, Chemistry, 2019 Joachim Frank*, Chemistry, 2017 RainerWeiss*, Physics, 2017 Stefan Hell, born in Romania, Chemistry, 2014 Thomas...
dark matter real?". Scientific American. Vol. 319, no. 2. pp. 36–43. Weiss, Rainer, "The Dark Universe Comes into Focus: The LIGO experiment opened a whole...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
both LIGO Laboratory and collaborating institutions. Barish appointed RainerWeiss as the first spokesperson. LSC members have access to the US-based Advanced...
2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna 2016: Hugh Herr 2017: RainerWeiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration...
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