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 ...

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 b ...

and

Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Stan ...

with C. R. Hagen 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 In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian (and hence the dynamics of the system itself) does not change (is invariant) under local transformations according to certain smooth families of operations ( Lie grou ...

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 electromagne ...

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 th ...

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 highe ...

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 ...

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 research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of ...

. In the fall of 1967 Guralnik went to

and frequently visited

Imperial College 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 ...

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. Guralnik died of a heart attack at age 77 in 2014.Physics Today - Gerald Stanford Guralnik
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References

External links

Papers written by G. Guralnik on Google ScholarPapers written by G. Guralnik in the INSPIRE-HEP databaseSakurai 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

See also

References

Further reading

External links