StevenWeinberg: The Scientist and His Science

[摘要] The world of physics lost a giant when Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg passed away in July2021 at the age of 87.The twenty-first century revealed some great surprises to us. One wasEinstein's discovery of the special theory of relativity.Another was that the microscopic parti-cles are governed by quantum mechanics. Following these also came the understanding that theUniverse is made up of a small number of elementary particles—-the quarks and leptons. Notjust that, but that there are just four fundamental forces—gravitation, electromagnetism, weaknuclear force and strong nuclear force and that the force carriers are elementary particles too! Itrequired a completely new mathematical framework that could describe the behaviour of theseelementary particles under the action of these fundamental forces in a manner consistent withthe principles of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Development of this frameworkcalled 'Quantum Field Theory(QFT)’ has been one of the crowning achievements of theoreti-cal physics of the 21st century. Steven Weinberg (1933-2021), a pioneer of the theory of weaknuclear force,was one physicist who made fundamental contributions to almost all aspects oftheoretical understanding of elementary particles based on QFT. This alone would have beenenough to classify him as an all-time great.But Steven Weinberg is special also because of thesharp insights he provided into the foundations of QFT itself. Going further, one can say thatfor aspiring scientists,his life and work provide a 'muster’for how one may pursue science.

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）