Rainer Weiss
German-American physicist
Died when: 92 years 330 days (1114 months)Star Sign: Libra
Rainer "Rai" Weiss (/wa?s/ WYSSE, German: [va?s]; born September 29, 1932) was an 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.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".
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.
In a 2022 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Weiss talks about his life and career, the memories of his childhood and youth, his undergraduate and graduate studies at the MIT and the future of gravitational waves astronomy.
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German-American physicist
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German-American physicist