Steven Weinberg obituary
by Frank Close from Science | The Guardian on (#5MWAG)
Winner of the 1979 Nobel prize whose insights determined the direction of high-energy particle physics for decades
The American theoretical particle physicist Steven Weinberg, who has died aged 88, was one of the leading 20th century figures in the field. In 1979 he won a Nobel prize for his work uniting two of nature's fundamental forces, which became a foundation of the standard model of particle physics, the theory that describes all known fundamental particles and forces in the universe.
Of Weinberg's prodigious oeuvre - in research, in his technical and popular books on quantum field theory and cosmology, and in articles of scientific commentary - his work demonstrating that transmutation of the elements by the weak nuclear force is fundamentally related to electromagnetism constituted a truly remarkable breakthrough.
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