José Leite Lopes

José Leite Lopes ( born October 28, 1918 in Recife, † 12 June 2006, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian theoretical physicist who dealt with quantum field theory and elementary particle physics.

Lopes first studieret Technical Chemistry in Pernambuco, but switched after a meeting with Mario 's Mountain 1937 Physics at the University of Sao Paulo and from 1940 to the University of Rio de Janeiro with the conclusion of 1942. In 1944 he went to Princeton University, where he received his doctorate in 1946 with Wolfgang Pauli. He became a professor of theoretical physics in Rio. In 1949 he founded with César Lattes, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas físicas ( CBPF ) in Rio. In the same year he attended at the invitation of Robert Oppenheimer, the Institute for Advanced Study and in 1957 he was a visiting scientist with Richard Feynman at Caltech. 1960 to 1963 he organized the Latin American School of Physics in Rio, where, among other Feynman and Chen Ning Yang held lectures. 1962 to 1964 he organized the Institute of Physics of the newly founded University of Brasilia. After the military coup in Brazil in 1964, he went to the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay Maurce Lévy. In 1968 he returned to Rio back and was director of the Institute of Physics of the University, but was removed from office by the military government in 1969 his offices and went to the U.S. ( visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh 1969/70 ) and then to France, where he 1970 to 1985 professor at the University of Strasbourg was ( until 1974, first as a visiting professor ) and researched for the CNRS. In 1986 he returned to Brazil as director of CBPF back ( after he in 1981 was there a short time).

In the late 1950s he was one of those attempts at unification of the electromagnetic and weak interaction took (in this context, he also said a heavy vector boson advance as exchange particles of the weak interaction, with the 40- 60-fold mass of the proton ). He was so ahead of its time ( the Unified theory of electroweak interaction was by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg developed in the 1960s ). In addition to high-energy physics, he also dealt with nuclear physics.

In 1999 he received the Science Prize of UNESCO, in 1993 the Mexican prize for science and technology and he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Ordem Nacional de Merito Cientifico. In 1989 he received the Order of Academic Palms, 1988, Felipe Carneiro Medal and 1989 the French Ordre National de Mérite.

1967 to 1971 he was president of the Brazilian Physical Society.

He has published 22 books partly popular scientific. In Strasbourg, he was the founder of the journal Fundamenta Scientiae.

Writings

• Idéias e Paixoes (ideas and passions ), CBPF 1999