Steven Weinberg is one of a small group of scientists who have radically changed the way we understand the universe and our place in it, writes Luis Álvarez-Gaumé
On 23 July, the great US theoretical physicist Steve Weinberg passed away in hospital in Austin, Texas, aged 88. He was a towering figure in the field, and made numerous seminal contributions to particle physics and cosmology that are part of the backbone of our current understanding of the fundamental laws of nature. He is part of the reduced rank of scientists who, in the course of history, have radically changed the way we understand the universe and our place in it.
Weinberg was born in New York, the son of Jewish immigrants, Eve and Frederick Weinberg. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he met Sheldon Glashow, later to become his Harvard colleague and with whom he would share the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics. Towards the end of high school, Weinberg was already set on becoming a theoretical physicist. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Cornell University in 1954, and then spent a year doing graduate work at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, after which he returned to the US to complete his graduate studies at Princeton. His PhD advisor was Sam Treiman and his thesis topic was the application of renormalisation theory to the effects of strong interactions in weak processes. Weinberg obtained his degree in 1957 and then spent two years at Columbia University. From 1959 to 1969 he was at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and later UC Berkeley, where he got his tenure in 1964. He was on leave at Harvard (1966–1967) and MIT (1967–1969), where he became professor of physics (1969–1973) and then moved to Harvard (1973–1983), where he succeeded Julian Schwinger as Higgins Professor of Physics. Weinberg joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin as the Josey Regental Professor of Physics in 1982, and remained there for the rest of his life.
Immense contributions
Perhaps his best known contribution to physics is his formulation of electroweak unification in the context of gauge theories and using the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism of symmetry breaking to give mass to the W and Z bosons, while sparing the photon (CERN Courier November 2017 p25). The names Glashow, Weinberg and Salam are forever associated with the spontaneously broken SU(2) × U(1) gauge theory, which unified the electromagnetic and weak interactions and provided a large number of predictions that have been experimentally confirmed. The most concise and elegant presentation of the theory appears in Weinberg’s famous 1967 paper: “A Model of Leptons”, one of the most cited papers in the history of physics, and a great example of clear science writing (CERN Courier November 2017 p31). At the time, the first family of quarks and leptons was known, but the second was incomplete. After a substantial amount of experimental and theoretical work, we now have the full formulation of the Standard Model (SM) describing our best knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature. This is a collective journey starting with the discovery of the electron in 1897, and concluding with the discovery of the scalar particle of the SM (the Higgs boson) at CERN in 2012. Weinberg was deeply involved with the building of the SM before and beyond his 1967 paper.
Normal humans would need to live several lives to accomplish so much
It is impossible to do justice to all the scientific contributions of Weinberg’s career, but we can list a few of them. In the early 1960s he embarked on the study of symmetry breaking, and wrote a seminal contribution with Goldstone and Salam describing in detail and in full generality the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of quantum field theory, providing sound bases to the earlier discoveries of Nambu and Goldstone. Around the same time, he worked out the general structure of scattering amplitudes with the emission of arbitrary numbers of photons and gravitons. It is remarkable that this work has played a very important role in the recent study of asymptotic symmetries in general relativity and gauge theories (for example, Bondi–Metzner–Sachs symmetries and generalisations, and the general theory of Feynman amplitudes).
From jets to GUTs
Together with George Sterman, Weinberg started the study of jets in QCD, whose importance in modern high-energy experiments can hardly be exaggerated. He (and independently Frank Wilczek) realised that in the Peccei–Quinn mechanism invoked to solve the strong-CP problem, there is a light pseudoscalar particle lurking in the background. This is the infamous axion, also a prime candidate for dark-matter particles and whose experimental search has been actively pursued for decades. Weinberg was one of the pioneers in the formulation of effective field theories that transformed the traditional approach to quantum field theory. He was the founder of chiral perturbation theory, one of the initiators of relativistic quantum theories at finite temperature, and of asymptotic safety, which has been used in some approaches to quantum gravity. In 1979 he (and independently Leonard Susskind) introduced the notion of technicolour – an alternative to the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism in which the scalar particle of the SM appears as a composite fermion, which some find more appealing, but so far has little experimental support. Finally, we can mention his work on grand unification together with Howard Georgi and Helen Quinn, where they used the renormalisation group to understand in detail how a single coupling in the ultraviolet evolves in such a way that in the infrared it generates the coupling constants of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions.
Astronomical arguments
Steven Weinberg also made profound contributions in his work on the cosmological constant. In 1989 he used astronomical arguments to indicate that the vacuum energy is many orders of magnitude smaller than would be expected from modern theories of elementary particles. His bound on its possible value based on anthropic reasoning is as deep as it is unsettling. And it agrees surprisingly well with the measured value, as inferred from observations of receding, distant supernovae. It shatters Einstein’s dream of unification, when he asked himself whether the Almighty had any choice in creating the universe. Anthropic reasoning opens the door to theories of the multiverse that may also be considered as inevitable in some versions of inflationary cosmology, and in the theory of the string landscape of possible vacua for our universe. Among all the parameters of the current standard models of cosmology and particle physics, the question of which are environmental and which are fundamental becomes meaningful. Some of their values may ultimately have only a purely statistical explanation based on anthropism. “It’s a depressing kind of solution to the problem,” remarked Weinberg recently in the Courier: “But as I’ve said: there are many conditions that we impose on the laws of nature, such as logical consistency, but we don’t have the right to impose the condition that the laws should be such that they make us happy!” (CERN Courier March/April 2021 p51). On the one hand, his work led to the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces; on the other the landscape of possibilities points against a unique universe. The tension between both points of view continues.
Weinberg also mastered the art of writing for non-experts. One of the most influential science books written for the general public is his masterpiece The First Three Minutes (1977), which provides a wonderful exposition of modern cosmology, the expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Towards the end of the epilogue he formulated his famous statement that generated heated discussions with philosophers and theologians: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.” In the next paragraph he tempers the coldness somewhat: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.” But the implied meaning that the laws of nature have no purpose continues to be as provocative as when it was made originally. The debate will linger on for a long time.
Controversies and passions
Weinberg’s non-technical books exhibit an extraordinary erudition in numerous subjects. His approach is original and thorough, and always illuminating. He did not shy away from delicate and controversial discussions. Weinberg was a declared atheist, with a rather negative opinion on the influence of religion on human history and society. He showed remarkable courage to be outspoken and to engage in public debates about it. Again in his 1977 book, he wrote: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilisation.” Needless to say, such statements raised a number of blisters in some quarters. He was also a champion of scientific reductionism, something that was not very well received in many philosophical communities. He was clearly passionate about science and scientific principles, and in defence of the search for truth. In Dreams of a Final Theory (2011) he described his fight to avoid the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). His ardent and convincing argument about the value of basic science, and also its importance as a motor of economic and technological growth, were not enough to convince sufficient members of the House of Representatives and the project was cancelled in 1993. It was a very hard blow to the US and global high-energy physics communities. The discussion had another great scientist on the other side: Phil Anderson, who passed away in 2020. It is not obvious if Anderson was against particle physics, or against big science. What is clear is that given the size of the budget deficit in the US (now and then), what was saved by not building the SSC did not go to “table top” science.
In a 2015 interview to Third Way, Weinberg explained his philosophy and strategy when writing for the general public: “When we talk about science as part of the culture of our times, we would better make it part of that culture by explaining what we are doing. I think it is very important not to write down to the public. You have to keep in mind that you are writing for people who are not mathematically trained, but are just as smart as you are.” This empathy and respect for the reader is immediately apparent as soon as you open any of his books, and together with the depth and breadth of his insight, explains their success.
He also excelled in the writing of technical books. In the early 1960s Weinberg became interested in astrophysics and cosmology, leading, among other things, to the landmark Gravitation and Cosmology (1971). The book became an instant classic, and it is still useful to learn about many aspects of general relativity and the early universe. In the 1990s he published a masterful three-volume set on The Quantum Theory of Fields, which is probably the definitive treatment on the subject in the 20th century. In 2008 he published Cosmology, an important update of his 1971 work, providing self-contained explanations of the ideas and formulas that are used and tested in modern cosmological observations. He also published Lectures on Quantum Mechanics in 2015, among one of the very best books on the subject, where the depth of his knowledge and insight shine throughout. The man had not lost his grit. Only this year, he published what he described as an advanced undergraduate textbook Foundations of Modern Physics, based on a lecture course he was asked to give at Austin. What distinguishes his scientific books from many others is that, in addition to the care and erudition with which the material is presented, they are also interspersed with all kinds of golden nuggets. Weinberg never avoids some of the conceptual difficulties that plague the subjects, and it is a real pleasure to find deep and inspiring clarifications.
It is not possible to list all his awards and honours, but let’s mention that he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1972, was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1977 and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. He was also a foreign honorary member of the Royal Society of London, received a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2020, and has been invited to give the most prestigious lectures on the planet. Normal humans would need to live several lives to accomplish so much.
A great general
Lately, Weinberg was interested in fundamental problems in the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics, and in the study of gravitational waves and what we can learn about the distribution of matter in the universe between us and their sources – two subjects of very active current research. In a 2020 preprint “Models of lepton and quark masses”, he returned to a problem that he last tackled in 1972, the fermion mass hierarchy.
His legacy will continue to inspire physicists for generations to come
He also continued lecturing until almost the very end. Weinberg was an avid reader of military history, as evidenced in some of his writings, and as with a great general, he died with his boots on.
The news of his demise spread like a tsunami in our community, and led us into a state of mourning. When such a powerful voice is permanently silenced, we are all inevitably diminished. His legacy will continue to inspire physicists for generations to come.
Steven Weinberg is survived by his wife Louise, professor of law at the University of Texas, whom he married in 1954, his daughter Elizabeth, a medical doctor, and a granddaughter Gabrielle.
