Sam Treiman | |
---|---|
Born |
Chicago, United States |
May 27, 1925
Died | November 30, 1999 New York City, United States |
(aged 74)
Residence | United States |
Nationality | American |
Fields | Physicist |
Institutions | Princeton University |
Alma mater |
Northwestern University University of Chicago |
Doctoral advisor |
Enrico Fermi John Alexander Simpson |
Doctoral students |
Curtis Callan Stephen L. Adler Nicola Khuri Steven Weinberg Carl Albright Kenneth Edwards Young Suh Kim John Bronzan Binayak Dutta-Roy Paul B. Kantor Alfred Goldhaber Jonathan Rosner Porter Johnson Rein Uritam Herbert H. Chen Stephen Schutz Kazuo Fujikawa Glennys Farrar William Shanahan Bennie Ward Robert Schrock Evelyn Monsay David Yevick Cornell Chun Dean Preston Michael Ramsey-Musolf |
Known for |
Goldberger-Treiman relation Callan-Treiman relation |
Notable awards | Oersted Medal (1985) |
Sam Bard Treiman (May 27, 1925 – November 30, 1999) was an American theoretical physicist who produced important research in the fields of cosmic rays, quantum physics, plasma physics and gravity physics. He made major contributions to the understanding of the weak interaction and he and his students are credited with developing the so-called standard model of elementary particle physics. He was a professor of physics at Princeton University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. He was a student of Enrico Fermi and John Alexander Simpson Jr. Treiman published numerous articles on quantum mechanics, plasmas, gravity theory, condensed matter and the history of physics.
Treiman's parents, Abraham and Sarah, were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who emigrated to Chicago. Sam had a brother, Oscar, who was six years older. Sam was educated in the Chicago public school system and, after graduating high school in 1942, he entered Northwestern University, electing to study chemical engineering. After two years at Northwestern he joined the navy, training as a radar repair technician and he spent the last year of the war as a petty officer in the Philippines, doing, in his words, "a prodigious amount of reading in the peaceful jungles - novels and science". After the war he went to the University of Chicago, receiving a B.S. (1949) and M.S. (1950), having changed his major to physics. He received an Atomic Energy Commission predoctoral fellowship and in 1952 he was granted a PhD by the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis dealt with the physics of cosmic rays, and the work was done under the supervision of John Alexander Simpson. While at the university, Sam met his wife, Joan Little, an educational psychologist. They have three children - Rebecca, Katherine and Thomas.