Rainer Weiss

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Rainer Weiss (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell, Template:IPA; September 29, 1932 – August 25, 2025) was a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.<ref name="Brink2014">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="NASA">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ann">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2017, Weiss was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".<ref name="Nobel">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="BBC-20171003">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="NYT-20171003">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="NYT-20171003dk">Template:Cite news</ref>

Weiss helped realize a number of challenging experimental tests of fundamental physics. He was a member of the Fermilab Holometer experiment, which uses a 40m laser interferometer to measure properties of space and time at quantum scale and provide Planck-precision tests of quantum holographic fluctuation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Early life and education

Rainer Weiss was born in Berlin, Brandenburg, Prussia, Germany, on September 29, 1932, the son of Gertrude Loesner and Frederick A. Weiss.<ref name = McCain>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="CV">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His father, a physician, neurologist, and psychoanalyst, was forced out of Germany by Nazis because he was Jewish and an active member of the Communist Party. His mother, an actress, was Christian.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His aunt was the sociologist Hilda Weiss.Template:Cn His younger sister is playwright Sybille Pearson.<ref name = McCain/>

The family fled first to Prague, but Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia after the 1938 Munich Agreement caused them to flee again; the philanthropic Stix family of St. Louis helped them obtain visas to enter the United States.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Weiss spent his youth in New York City, where he attended Columbia Grammar School.<ref name = McCain/>

He studied at MIT, dropping out at the beginning of his junior year<ref name="Cho2016">Cho, Adrian (August 4, 2016). "Meet the College Dropout who Invented the Gravitational Wave Detector Template:Webarchive", Science. Retrieved May 20, 2019.</ref> with the excuse that he had abandoned his coursework to pursue a romantic relationship with a music student from Chicago.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> While this affair was a contributing factor, Weiss's concurrent vacillation between MIT's engineering and physics tracks may also have played a significant role. Jerrold Zacharias, then an influential physicist and MIT professor, intervened, and Weiss, after working as a technician in Zacharias's lab, eventually returned to receive his S.B. degree in 1955. He would complete his PhD in 1962, still with Zacharias as advisor/mentor.<ref name="thesis-weiss-1962">Template:Cite thesis</ref><ref name=":0" />

Career

Weiss taught at Tufts University from 1960 to 1962, was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University from 1962 to 1964, and then joined the faculty at MIT in 1964.<ref name="CV"/>

For Weiss's initial work at MIT, he started a group studying cosmology and gravitation. Needing to develop new technology, particularly in regards to the stabilization of equipment set to measure minute fluctuations, his lab included machine and electronics shop, with a hands-on expectation of his students for fabrication and design.<ref name=":0" />

By 1966, Weiss's tenure at MIT was at risk because of the failure of his group to produce publications. On advice from Bernard Burke, then head of the division on astrophysics in the Physics Department, Weiss recalibrated his standards for submitting articles for publication, eventually finding grounds for publication that he believed met his personal standards as scientifically worthy and publishable. He was then able to qualify for tenure and remain at MIT.<ref name=":0" />

That same year Joseph Weber claimed to have invented a way to detect gravitational waves.<ref>The freest of free-falls | NASA Blueshift</ref> When Weiss’s students asked him about Weber’s work, he was unable to explain it to them, as it seemed to contradict his understanding of general relativity. In 1967, to illustrate the principle of gravitational wave detection in a simpler way, Weiss devised a thought experiment involving time of flight measurements of light between free masses in space, which in principle required “impossibly precise clocks”. About a year later, as Weber’s claims remained unconfirmed, Weiss started to realize that maybe Weber was wrong. He eventually revisited his idea and replaced the clocks with laser interferometry and concluded that such an approach could realistically detect gravitational waves, at sensitivities beyond what Weber’s resonant bars could achieve.<ref>Q&A: Rainer Weiss on LIGO’s origins</ref>

Vietnam Era cuts to science grants

In 1973, Weiss was forced to pivot with his work as the US military cut funding for any science that was not determined to be "directly relevant to its core mission." Weiss wrote a proposal to the NSF that described "a new way to measure gravitational waves." This was the work that would eventually lead to his 2017 Nobel Prize, though it was many years before the interferometers Weiss and his students built were sensitive enough to actually detect gravitational waves, making for numerous unpleasant doctoral thesis defenses where Weiss's graduate students were unable to present positive (in layman's terms: any) results.<ref name=":0" />

MIT/Caltech collaboration

Weiss proposed the concept of LIGO to Kip Thorne in 1972, but it took three years before Thorne was convinced it could work.<ref>Ten Years Later, LIGO is a Black-Hole Hunting Machine</ref> After the study of prototypes at MIT, Caltech, Garching, and Glasgow, and Weiss's estimates what it would take to build a full scale interferometer, Caltech and MIT signed an agreement about the design and construction of LIGO in 1984, with joint leadership by Ronald Drever, Weiss, and Thorne.<ref>A Brief History of LIGO</ref>

In a 2022 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Weiss talks about his life and career, the memories of his childhood and youth, his undergraduate and graduate studies at MIT, and the future of gravitational waves astronomy.<ref>Template:Cite video</ref>

Achievements

Weiss brought two fields of fundamental physics research from birth to maturity: characterization of the cosmic background radiation,<ref name="ann"/> and interferometric gravitational wave observation.

In 1973 he made pioneering measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, taken from a weather balloon, showing that the microwave background exhibited the thermal spectrum characteristic of the remnant radiation from the Big Bang.<ref name="Cho2016"/> He later became co-founder and science advisor of the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite,<ref name="Brink2014"/> which made detailed mapping of the radiation.

Weiss also pioneered the concept of using lasers for an interferometric gravitational wave detector, suggesting that the path length required for such a detector would necessitate kilometer-scale arms. He built a prototype in the 1970s, following earlier work by Robert L. Forward.<ref>Cho, Adrian (October 3, 2017). "Ripples in space: U.S. trio wins physics Nobel for discovery of gravitational waves Template:Webarchive," Science. Retrieved May 20, 2019.</ref><ref>Cervantes-Cota, Jorge L., Galindo-Uribarri, Salvador, and Smoot, George F. (2016). "A Brief History of Gravitational Waves," Universe, 2, no. 3, 22. Retrieved May 20, 2019.</ref> He co-founded the NSF LIGO (gravitational-wave detection) project,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> which was based on his report "A study of a long Baseline Gravitational Wave Antenna System".<ref>Linsay, P., Saulson, P., and Weiss, R. (1983). "A Study of a Long Baseline Gravitational Wave Antenna System Template:Webarchive, NSF. Retrieved May 20, 2019.</ref>

Both of these efforts couple challenges in instrument science with physics important to the understanding of the Universe.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In February 2016, he was one of the four scientists of the LIGO/Virgo collaboration presenting at the press conference for the announcement that the first direct gravitational wave observation had been made in September 2015.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="PRL-20160211">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Naeye">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Nature_11Feb16">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn

Kip Thorne described Weiss as "by a large margin, the most influential person this field [the study of gravitational waves] has seen."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

According the Nobel Prize website, Weiss received one half of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics prize money share, while his LIGO colleagues and co-winners Barry Barish and Kip Thorne only received one quarter of it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life and death

Classical music was a profound influence and shaping force in Weiss's life, from his early youth in an immigrant family,Template:Clarify through his shared love of Beethoven's Spring Sonata, which cemented his deep personal relationship with mentor Jerrold Zacharias.<ref name=":0" />

He married and had his first child while still in graduate school, "the best time of my life." He was married to Rebecca Young from 1959 until his death, and they had two children.<ref name = McCain/>

Weiss died at a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 25, 2025, at the age of 92.<ref name = McCain/>

Honors and awards

Weiss has been recognized by numerous awards including:

Selected publications

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Notes

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See also

References

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Further reading

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