Julius Wess
Julius Wess (born 5 December 1934 in Oberwölz in Styria; † August 8, 2007 in Hamburg) was an Austrian professor of theoretical physics.
Life
Wess received his doctorate in 1957 at the University of Vienna as a pupil of Hans Thirring in theoretical physics. As a post - graduate student he was at CERN, at New York University and at the University of Washington in Seattle and completed his habilitation in 1965 in Vienna. In 1966 he was Associate Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He was appointed in 1968 as Professor and Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Karlsruhe. After several rejected further calls he finally changed in 1990 at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich and was also appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. After his retirement in 2002, he was recently a guest at DESY in Hamburg, where he was also the teaching, especially for supersymmetry and supergravity, at the University of Hamburg devoted himself. August 8, 2007 Wess died unexpectedly at the age of 72 years and was buried in the cemetery Ohlsdorf in Hamburg.
He has been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study ( Professor Einstein, 1980), at the University of Vienna ( Professor Schrödinger 1985) and the University of California, Berkeley ( Miller Professor 1986).
Wess ran from 1993 to 1996 the Scientific Council of DESY. He also participated intensively in the development of new scientific structures in physics in the new federal states after the turn and the former Yugoslavia.
Services
Wess gained in the field of mathematical physics, particularly elementary particle physics, supersymmetry and supergravity worldwide recognition among colleagues. In the 1960s, he was one of the first to the (and other used around the same time for the quark concept of Murray Gell-Mann ) anwandte SU ( 3) group in elementary particle physics. He also examined two-dimensional quantum field theories and conformal symmetry and with Bruno Zumino from 1967 non-linear representations of chiral symmetry ( Wess - Zumino term, chiral anomaly ).
He discovered in 1973 along with Bruno Zumino at the University of Karlsruhe, the first quantum field theory with supersymmetry in four space-time coordinates, which was later named as the Wess - Zumino model after him and can certainly be seen as an "invention" of supersymmetry. Regardless supersymmetry was also something previously "discovered" by Russian scientists, but in the West was never addressed, and some string theorists.
Publication
- Together with Jonathan excavator: Supersymmetry and supergravity. Princeton Series in Physics, 1983, Revised Edition, 1992, ISBN 0691025304
Awards
Memberships
- Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
- Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
- Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
- 2005: Honorary Member of the Austrian Physical Society
Julius Wess Award
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology gives honor of Wess since 2008 the Julius Wess Award. Previous winners include:
- 2008: Frank Wilczek
- 2009: John Ellis
- 2010: Valeri Anatoljevich Rubakow
- 2011: Guido Altarelli
- 2012: Peter Jenni and Michel Della Negra