Roman Wladimir Jackiw[a] (/roʊˈmæn dʒæˈkiːv/; November 8, 1939 – June 14, 2023) was a Polish-born American theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist.
Roman Jackiw | |
|---|---|
Роман Яцків | |
 Jackiw in 2013 | |
| Born | 8 November 1939 |
| Died | 14 June 2023 (aged 83) |
| Alma mater | Cornell Swarthmore |
| Known for | Adler–Bell–Jackiw anomaly Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity Theta vacuum |
| Children | Stefan Jackiw Nicholas Jackiw |
| Awards | Dirac Medal (1998) Heineman Prize (1995) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Thesis | Nonperturbative solutions of the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the vertex function (1966) |
| Doctoral advisor | Hans Bethe Kenneth G. Wilson |
| Doctoral students | Andrea diSessa Andrew Strominger Joseph Lykken |
Biography
editBorn in Lubliniec, Poland in 1939[1] to a Ukrainian family, the family later moved to Austria and Germany before settling in New York City when Jackiw was about 10.[2]
Jackiw earned his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and his PhD from Cornell University in 1966 under Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Theoretical Physics from 1969 until his retirement. He retained his affiliation in emeritus status in 2019.[3]
Jackiw co-discovered the chiral anomaly, which is also known as the Adler–Bell–Jackiw anomaly. In 1969, he and John Stewart Bell published their explanation, which was later expanded and clarified by Stephen L. Adler, of the observed decay of a neutral pion into two photons. This decay is forbidden by a symmetry of classical electrodynamics, but Bell and Jackiw showed that this symmetry cannot be preserved at the quantum level. Their introduction of an "anomalous" term from quantum field theory required that the sum of the charges of the elementary fermions had to be zero. This work also gave important support to the colour theory of quarks.
Jackiw is also known for Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity, a theory of gravity with one dimension each of space and time that includes a dilaton field. Sometimes known as the R = T model or as JT gravity, it is used to model some aspects of near-extremal black holes.[4]
Jackiw married fellow physicist So-Young Pi, daughter of Korean writer Pi Chun-deuk. One of Jackiw's sons is Stefan Jackiw, an American violinist. The other is Nicholas Jackiw, a software designer known for inventing The Geometer's Sketchpad. His daughter, Simone Ahlborn, is an educator at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jackiw died 14 June 2023, at the age of 83.[5]
Awards
edit- Heineman Prize, 1995
- On 26 May 2000, Jackiw received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden[6]
Notes
editReferences
edit- ^ Kubiĭovych, Volodymyr; Struk, Danylo Husar (1984). Encyclopedia of Ukraine. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802034441.
- ^ Oral History Transcript — Dr. Roman Jackiw American Institute of Physics (5 August 2010)
- ^ "MIT Department of Physics Faculty". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
- ^ Stanford, Douglas; Witten, Edward (7 July 2019). "JT Gravity and the Ensembles of Random Matrix Theory". arXiv:1907.03363 [hep-th].
- ^ Chakrabarty, Deepto (15 June 2023). "In Memoriam: Roman Jackiw, Jerrold Zacharias Professor of Physics Emeritus (1939-2023)". MIT. Retrieved 17 June 2023.
- ^ "Honorary doctorates - Uppsala University, Sweden".
External links
edit
- MIT web page for Roman Jackiw
- Dirac Medal website's description of Jackiw's 1998 prize
- Biography of John Bell, including description of his 1969 work with Jackiw
- Roman Jackiw at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
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