Weiss, Rainer
Weiss, Rainer,
1932–, American physicist, b. Berlin, Germany, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1962. Weiss has been on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1964 (emeritus from 2001) and on the faculty of Louisiana State Univ. from 2001. In 1975 Weiss proposed a concept for detecting gravitational waves, which had been predicted by Albert Einstein, by using lasers to monitor the distance between a pair of mirrors. With Kip ThorneThorne, Kip Stephen,1940–, American theoretical physicist, b. Logan, Utah. Ph.D. Princeton, 1965. Thorne has been a professor (emeritus from 2009) at the California Institute of Technology since 1967.
..... Click the link for more information. and Ronald Dever, who were also working on gravitational wave detectors, he co-founded (1984) the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which ultimately detected gravitational waves in 2015 (see gravitationgravitation,
the attractive force existing between any two particles of matter. The Law of Universal Gravitation
Since the gravitational force is experienced by all matter in the universe, from the largest galaxies down to the smallest particles, it is often called
..... Click the link for more information. ). In 2017 he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the development of LIGO and the observation of gravitational waves; Thorne and Barry BarishBarish, Barry Clark,
1936–, American experimental physicist, b. Omaha, Nebr. Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1962. Barish has been a professor (emeritus from 2005) at the California Institute of Technology since 1966.
..... Click the link for more information. shared the other half for their contributions. Weiss also has studied and measured cosmic background radiation and was a co-founder of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.