Jump to content

Joseph Weber

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 146.142.50.92 (talk) at 20:47, 11 August 2008 (minor edits). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other people named Joe or Joseph Weber, see Weber.
Joseph Weber
Born(1919-05-17)May 17, 1919
DiedSeptember 30, 2000(2000-09-30) (aged 81)
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materUnited States Naval Academy
The Catholic University of America
Known forWeber bars
maser
laser
gravitational wave detection
Scientific career
FieldsPhysicist
InstitutionsUniversity of Maryland College Park

Joseph Weber (May 17, 1919 – September 30, 2000) was an American physicist. He gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser and developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars).

Early education

Weber graduated from Paterson High School[citation needed] (and the Paterson Talmud Torah) in Paterson, New Jersey in the midst of the Depression. He began his undergraduate education at Cooper Union, but to save his family the expense of his room and board he won admittance to the US Naval Academy through a competitive exam. He told his children that after taking the exam, his US Senator paid a surprise visit to his family home, "to make sure he wasn't Black," before nominating him to the Academy. He graduated from the Academy in 1940.[1]

He served aboard US Navy ships during WWII, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. A memorable experience was his service on the "Lady Lex" USS Lexington (CV-2). Weber was the Officer of the Deck on the Lexington when the ship received word of the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the Battle of the Coral Sea his carrier sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō and was in turn fatally damaged on May 8, 1942. Weber often regaled his students with the story of how the Lexington glowed incandescent as she slipped beneath the waves.

Later, he commanded the sub-chaser SC-690, first in the Carribean, and later in the Mediterranean Sea. In that role, he took part in the invasion of Sicily at Gela Beach, in July, 1943.[2] [3]

He studied electronics at the Naval Post-Graduate School in 1943, and from 1945-1948, he headed electronic countermeasures design for the Navy's Bureau of Ships, in Washington, DC. [4] He resigned from the Navy in 1948 to become a professor of engineering.

Early Post-Naval Career; Development of the MASER

In 1948, he joined the engineering faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park. A condition of his appointment was that he should quickly attain a PhD. Thus, he did his PhD studies, on microwave spectroscopy, at night, while already a faculty member. He received his PhD from The Catholic University of America in 1951. During the course of his doctoral research, he worked out the idea of coherent microwave emissions, and gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser at the Electron Tube Research Conference held in Ottawa in 1952.[5] These ideas were developed simultaneously by Charles Townes [6], Nikolay Basov, and Aleksandr Prokhorov, who built working prototypes of these devices, and received the Nobel Prize for this work in 1964.

Detection of gravitational waves

His interest in general relativity led Weber to use a 1955-1956 sabbatical, funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, to study gravitational radiation with John Archibald Wheeler at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ and the Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.[7] At the time, the existence of gravitational waves was not widely accepted. Weber was the first to make a real attempt to detect these waves. After he began publishing papers on the detection of gravitational waves, he moved from the Engineering department to the Physics department at Maryland.

He developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars) in the 1960s, and began publishing papers with evidence that he had detected these waves. In 1972, he sent a gravitational wave detection apparatus to the moon (the "Lunar Surface Gravimeter", part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) on the Apollo 17 lunar mission.[8]

Claims of gravitational wave detection discredited

In the 1970s, the results of these gravitational wave experiments were largely discredited, although Weber continued to argue that he had detected gravitational waves.[9] The process of how physicists and the general public came to reject Weber's claims that he had found gravitational waves is described in several articles and the book "Gravity's Shadow," by sociologist Harry Collins.

Legacy

Although his attempts to find gravitational waves are now considered to have failed, Weber is generally regarded as the father of gravitational wave detection efforts, including LIGO, MiniGrail, and several HFGW research programs around the world.

A satellite of the Naval Academy's Small Satellite Program has been named WeberSat-LARES[10] in his honor [11].

The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation was named in his honor.

Personal life

Weber was the youngest of four children born in Paterson, New Jersey, to Yiddish-speaking parents. His name was "Yonah" until he entered grammar school. He had no birth certificate, and his father had taken the last name of "Weber" to match an available passport in order to emigrate to the US. Thus, Joe Weber had little proof of either his family or his given name, which gave him some trouble in obtaining a passport at the height of the red scare.

His first marriage, to his high school classmate Anita Straus, ended with her death in 1971. His second marriage was to astronomer Virginia Trimble. He had 4 sons (from his first marriage), and six grandchildren.

References

  1. ^ http://www.usna.com/NetCommunity/NC/History/ClassOf1940/W.htm#7
  2. ^ http://www.usna.com/NetCommunity/NC/History/ClassOf1940/OnTheSea.htm
  3. ^ http://www.usna.com/NetCommunity/NC/History/ClassOf1940/Wagenhals_Worley.htm
  4. ^ http://www.usna.com/NetCommunity/NC/History/ClassOf1940/W.htm#7
  5. ^ Innovation Hall of Fame
  6. ^ Charles H. Townes - Nobel Lecture
  7. ^ http://www.usna.com/NetCommunity/NC/History/ClassOf1940/Wagenhals_Worley.htm
  8. ^ Lunar Surface Gravimeter
  9. ^ Early days in the Sociology of Gravitational Waves
  10. ^ http://web.usna.navy.mil/~webersat/amos2.pdf
  11. ^ MidSTAR Homepage
  • Yodh and Wallis (2001). "Obituaries: Joseph Weber". Physics Today. 54 (7): 74. doi:10.1063/1.1397401. (Obituary)
  • Trimble (2000). "Obituary: Joseph Weber, 1919-2000". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 32. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |no= ignored (help) (Obituary)
  • "Faces and Places: Joe Weber 1919-2000". CERN Courier. Retrieved 2006-02-26. (Obituary)
  • Glanz (2000). "Joseph Weber Dies at 81; A Pioneer in Laser Theory". The New York Times. (Obituary)
  • Harry Collins. Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
  • Marcia Bartusiak. Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time. Retrieved 2008-08-01.
Stub icon

This article about a physicist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Weber&oldid=231304890"