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In Memoriam

Steven Weinberg
In Memoriam

ICTP was saddened by the passing of physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, a long-time friend of the Centre. 

Weinberg had been a frequent visitor to ICTP. Most recently, he gave a virtual lecture to mark the 50th anniversary of his 1967 paper, “A Model of Leptons”, in which he presented his work on the unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions. The paper played a seminal role in the development of the Standard Model of particle physics. Together with ICTP founder Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.

Weinberg’s research has extended over many areas of theoretical physics, especially in the theory of elementary particles and in cosmology. In recent years, he was concerned with the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, and in particular whether any viable generalization of quantum mechanics is possible. He had also returned to his concern with cosmology, working with Raphael Flauger on a new project: to evaluate the effects of intervening matter on gravitational radiation from distant sources, such as gravitational waves from coalescing black holes discovered by the LIGO observatory and from quantum fluctuations in the early universe.

In 2020, Weinberg received the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The $3 million prize cited Weinberg's “continuous leadership in fundamental physics, with broad impact across particle physics, gravity and cosmology, and for communicating science to a wider audience".

ICTP's Marie Curie Library has a number of books written by Weinberg in its collection; you can find a list of them here.

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