Sheldon Lee Glashow
Born	December 5, 1932 (1932-12-05) (age 76) New York City, New York, USA
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Boston University Harvard University
Alma mater	Cornell University Harvard University
Known for	Electroweak theory Criticism of Superstring theory
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)

Sheldon Lee Glashow (born December 5, 1932) is a Nobel Prize winning American physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University.

[edit] Birth and education

Sheldon Lee Glashow was born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Russia.^[1] He attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York City. He was a friend of Steven Weinberg.^[2] He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1954 and a Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1959 under Nobel-laureate physicist Julian Schwinger. He was a visiting professor at MIT in 1974.^[2]

[edit] Research

In 1961, Glashow extended electroweak unification models due to Schwinger by including a short range neutral current , the Z0. The resulting symmetry structure that Glashow proposed, SU(2) X U(1), forms the basis of the accepted theory of the electroweak interactions. For this discovery, Glashow along with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In collaboration with James Bjorken, Glashow was the first to predict the charm quark, which he originally named the "charmed quark", in 1964. This work showed that the quark pairs would largely cancel out flavor changing neutral currents, as well as removing a technical disaster for any quantum field theory with unequal numbers of quarks and leptons- an anomaly.

In 1973, Glashow and Howard Georgi proposed the first grand unified theory. They discovered how to fit the gauge forces in the standard model into an SU(5) group, and the quarks and leptons into two simple representations. Their theory qualitatively predicted the general pattern of coupling constant running, with plausible assumptions, it gave rough mass ratio values between third generation leptons and quarks, and it was the first indication that the law of Baryon number is inexact, that the proton is unstable. This work was the foundation for all future unifying work.

[edit] Superstring theory

Glashow is a notable skeptic of Superstring theory due to its lack of experimentally testable predictions. His departure from the Harvard physics department has been linked to the department's recent embrace of string theory.^{[citation needed]} He had previously campaigned to keep string theorists out of Harvard.^[3].

He is also a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

• Nobel lecture
• Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
• Sheldon Lee Glashow
• Interview with Glashow on Superstrings
• Contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including inter alia the prediction of the weak neutral current.
• Sheldon Glashow Boston University Physics Department
• Sheldon Glashow Photos