Gerald Stanford "Gerry" Guralnik (; September 17, 1936 – April 26, 2014) was the Chancellor’s Professor of
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
. In 1964 he co-discovered the
Higgs mechanism
In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other be ...
and
Higgs boson with
C. R. Hagen
Carl Richard Hagen (; born 2 February 1937) is a professor of particle physics at the University of Rochester. He is most noted for his contributions to the Standard Model and Spontaneous symmetry breaking, Symmetry breaking as well as the 1964 co- ...
and
Tom Kibble
Sir Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble (; 23 December 1932 – 2 June 2016) was a British theoretical physicist, senior research investigator at the Blackett Laboratory and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. His ...
(GHK). As part of ''
Physical Review Letters
''Physical Review Letters'' (''PRL''), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the ''Journa ...
'' 50th anniversary celebration, the journal recognized this discovery as one of the milestone papers in PRL history. While widely considered to have authored the most complete of the
early papers on the Higgs theory, GHK were
controversially not included in the 2013
Nobel Prize in Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
.
In 2010, Guralnik was awarded the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
's
J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for the "elucidation of the properties of
spontaneous symmetry breaking
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a spontaneous process of symmetry breaking, by which a physical system in a symmetric state spontaneously ends up in an asymmetric state. In particular, it can describe systems where the equations of motion or ...
in four-dimensional relativistic
gauge theory and of the mechanism for the consistent generation of
vector boson
In particle physics, a vector boson is a boson whose spin equals one. The vector bosons that are regarded as elementary particles in the Standard Model are the gauge bosons, the force carriers of fundamental interactions: the photon of electromag ...
masses".
Guralnik received his BS degree from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
in 1958 and his PhD degree from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1964. He went to
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
as a postdoctoral fellow supported by the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
and then became a postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...
. In the fall of 1967 Guralnik went to
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
and frequently visited
Imperial College and
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
where he was a staff member from 1985 to 1987. While at
Los Alamos, he did extensive work on the development and application of computational methods for
lattice QCD
Lattice QCD is a well-established non-perturbative approach to solving the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) theory of quarks and gluons. It is a lattice gauge theory formulated on a grid or lattice of points in space and time. When the size of the ...
.
Guralnik died of a heart attack at age 77 in 2014.
Physics Today - Gerald Stanford Guralnik
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See also
* 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers
*Higgs mechanism
In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other be ...
* Higgs boson
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
Papers written by G. Guralnik on Google Scholar
Papers written by G. Guralnik in the INSPIRE-HEP database
Sakurai Prize Videos
*
*Guralnik, Gerald (2013)
"Heretical Ideas that Provided the Cornerstone for the Standard Model of Particle Physics".
SPG MITTEILUNGEN March 2013, No. 39, p. 14
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guralnik, Gerald
American physicists
Particle physicists
Brown University faculty
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
Harvard University alumni
1936 births
2014 deaths
Theoretical physicists
J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics recipients
MIT Department of Physics alumni