Helen Quinn

Helen Rhoda Quinn ( born May 19, 1943 in Melbourne) is an Australian theoretical physicist who works mainly in the field of elementary particle physics.

Quinn attended in Victoria, Australia, School and studied at the University of Melbourne ( with a grant of Meteorology ) before they went to the U.S. to Stanford University, where she received in 1963 her Bachelor and 1964, her master's degree and in 1967 received his doctorate. 1967 to 1968 she was at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator ) and then to 1970 at DESY in Hamburg ( where her husband worked as a physicist ), before she went to Harvard University, where she was 1976/77 Associate Professor. In 1977 she went again to the SLAC, where she has been employed since 1979 established as a scientist, 1988 to 1993, coordinated the training (she is also active in the collaboration of SLAC with school teachers in California). Since 2003 she has been professor of physics at SLAC.

Quinn was known for her work on the grand unified theory (GUT) and the CP symmetry. With Howard Georgi and Steven Weinberg postulated by 1974 as the first convergence of the coupling constants in a GUT theory (at up GeV ). With Roberto Peccei They postulated the Peccei -Quinn symmetry about the CP- conservation in the strong interaction ( in contrast to the electroweak interaction ) to explain. From this theory, the prediction of the following (so far unobserved ) axions. She examined the Cabibbo - Kobayashi - Maskawa matrix, the CP violation in B- meson decays. With Enrico Poggio and Steven Weinberg, she introduced the quark- hadron duality. With Thomas Appelquist, she investigated the 1972 Renormierungseigenschaften ( cancellation of divergences ) of simplified models ( Appelquist -Quinn model) of the electroweak interaction.

1974-1978 she was Sloan Fellow. Since 1998 she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003 and of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. In 2000 she received with Howard Georgi and Jogesh Pati the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics ( ICTP ) in Trieste. She is an honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame ( 2002). Since 2004 she was president of the American Physical Society (APS ). In 2005 she was awarded the Order of Australia as Officer. In 2013 her the Sakurai Prize was awarded.

She is married and has two children.

Writings

• Yossi Nir: The mystery of missing antimatter, Princeton University Press, 2008
• Quinn: The CP puzzle of the strong interactions. In: Dirac Lecture. , 2001. (English)
• Quinn: B Physics and CP Violation. In: Trieste Lectures., 2001. (English)