Lincoln Wolfenstein
Lincoln Wolfenstein ( born February 10, 1923 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American theoretical physicist who deals with the theory of the weak interaction.
Wolfenstein studied at the University of Chicago ( Bachelor's degree in 1943, master's degree in 1944 ) and became in 1949 a doctorate in Edward Teller ( " Theory of proposed reactions Involving polarized protons "). In between, he was from 1944 to 1946 at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. After that, he was from 1948 (then as an instructor ) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (that is until 1967 he was at its precursor, the Carnegie Institute of Technology ), where he was professor of physics emeritus and 2000. In 1955 he was a guest lecturer at the Berkeley University. 1965/65 he was a Fellow of the National Science Foundation at CERN. In 1988 he was Visiting Scholar at Caltech Fairchild and 1970/71 Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.
His doctorate and his first works were on the spin-polarized proton - proton scattering (more precisely, he studied the triplet scattering according to the steps polarization interaction observation ). Wolfenstein is best known for work on weak interactions. In 1964, he suggested after the discovery of CP violation, that of a new super- weak force ( superweak interaction) may be caused. Today, however, it is attributed to a phase in the Cabibbo - Kobayashi - Maskawa matrix ( the mass and mixing matrix of quarks ), for Wolfenstein 1983 a new named after him parameterization stated. A further area of Wolfenstein are neutrinos, where he is mainly known for his involvement (1978 ) on the answer to the riddle of the solar neutrinos via the so-called MSW effect, named after him and the Russian physicists Stanislav Pavlovich Mikheyev and Alexei Smirnov to in 1985.
In 1992 he was awarded the Sakurai Prize. In 2005 he received the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize for his participation in the MIW effect. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1978.
Writings
- Wolfenstein (Editor): CP- Violation. North Holland, 1989 ( Reprint band )
- CP Violation. TASI Lectures 2000
- Neutrino Physics. Reviews of Modern Physics, Centennial Issue, Volume 71, 1999