Down-to-earth, unassuming, and keen to discuss his research, physicist Rainier Weiss is remarkably easy to talk to. Five years ago, his work earned him half the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics, with the other half going to Barry and Kip Thorne, for “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. The US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is where gravitational waves were first observed in 2015, definitively confirming the last remaining untested prediction from Albert Einstein’s century-old general theory of relativity. Despite portending their existence, Einstein himself doubted that these waves would ever be observable because they are extremely weak. Weiss’s breakthrough idea of using laser interferometry finally made possible that first observation – of gravitational waves emitted from the merger of two black holes, 1.3 billion light-years away from Earth – and the many more that LIGO has since detected. It took decades of effort from Weiss, his Nobel colleagues and many others, and the discovery represented a pinnacle in physics that also ushered in a new era in astronomy. Since the advent of observational astronomy, we had been scanning the universe mostly by observing first visible light, then a broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Now, gravitational waves were able to provide a new way of probing many cosmic phenomena. Only seven years after the birth of gravitational astronomy, it has already produced much valuable new knowledge. Each of the three Nobel laureates followed his own arc toward these successes. Weiss’s path shows how talented experimental physicists are formed, how new scientific ideas can come from unexpected directions, and how sheer perseverance is needed to bring a large-scale physics experiment to fruition. Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany on 29 September 1932, during the Nazis’ rise to power. Weiss’s father, Frederick, who Rainier describes as “an ardent and idealistic communist” from a young age, was a physician. As a Jew and an anti-Nazi communist, who had testified against a Nazi doctor accused of malpractice, Frederick was detained by the Nazis when Rainier’s mother, Gertrude, was pregnant with him. At the behest of his Christian wife, whose family had some local contacts, Frederick was released and sent to Prague. Once Rainier was born, Gertrude travelled with her new baby to join Frederick in Czechoslovakia, where the couple had another child, Sybille, in 1937. But when the 1938 Munich Agreement allowed German troops to enter Czechoslovakia, the family had to escape once more. “We heard the decision on a radio while on vacation in Slovakia and joined a large group of people heading toward Prague to attempt to get a visa to emigrate to almost anywhere else in the world that would accept Jews,” Rainier recalls in his Nobel biography. The family moved to the US in 1939. Under the immigration law at that time, this was only possible because of Frederick’s profession and because a “very wonderful woman” as they call her, from the philanthropic family of St Louis, posted a bond to guarantee that he would not be a burden to the community. He was raised in New York City, where he initially attended public school. In the fifth grade, he received a scholarship, via a local refugee relief organization, to join Columbia Grammar School – a private school in mid-Manhattan, which at one time was associated with preparing students for Columbia University. Music, science and history were his favorite courses, and as a teenager he built custom high-fidelity or “hi-fi” audio systems for classical music lovers.
You must be logged in to post a comment.