The Albert Einstein Professorship in Science is an endowed professorship in physics established at Princeton University in 1974 by a donation from the International Business Machine Corporation (IBM). [1]
Albert Einstein was never on the faculty of Princeton University, although in the early 1930s he did occupy an office in Princeton University's mathematics building (the old Fine Hall), [2] while he was waiting for the Institute for Advanced Study to be built. [3] Einstein was given a corner office in the old Fine Hall, which served as the temporary headquarters of the Institute for Advanced Study. [4]
Princeton University's Albert Einstein Professorship in Science should not be confused with various other Einstein professorships, such as Stony Brook University's Albert Einstein Professorship of Physics, which was held by C. N. Yang (who is now Professor Emeritus). [5]
All three of the holders of the professorship have received numerous awards and honors and have been elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences (Dicke [6] in 1967, Peebles [7] in 1988, [8] and Steinhardt [9] in 1998). Peebles won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019.
Holders of the Albert Einstein Professorship have been: [1]
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are the two pillars of modern physics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in "Einstein" becoming synonymous with "genius". Einsteinium, one of the synthetic elements in the periodic table, was named in his honor.
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel, many of whom had emigrated from Europe to the United States.
Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang, also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge theory, and both particle physics and condensed matter physics. He and Tsung-Dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on parity non-conservation of weak interaction. The two proposed that one of the basic quantum-mechanics laws, the conservation of parity, is violated in the so-called weak nuclear reactions, those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles. Yang is also well known for his collaboration with Robert Mills in developing non-abelian gauge theory, widely known as the Yang–Mills theory.
Abraham Pais was a Dutch-American physicist and science historian. Pais earned his Ph.D. from University of Utrecht just prior to a Nazi ban on Jewish participation in Dutch universities during World War II. When the Nazis began the forced relocation of Dutch Jews, he went into hiding, but was later arrested and saved only by the end of the war. He then served as an assistant to Niels Bohr in Denmark and was later a colleague of Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Pais wrote books documenting the lives of these two great physicists and the contributions they and others made to modern physics. He was a physics professor at Rockefeller University until his retirement.
The Albert Einstein Award was an award in theoretical physics, given periodically from 1951 to 1979, that was established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein's 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and, in addition to a gold medal of Einstein by sculptor Gilroy Roberts, it also included a prize money of $15,000, which was later reduced to $5,000. The winner was selected by a committee of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administered the award. Lewis L. Strauss used to be one of the trustees of the institute.
A cyclic model is any of several cosmological models in which the universe follows infinite, or indefinite, self-sustaining cycles. For example, the oscillating universe theory briefly considered by Albert Einstein in 1930 theorized a universe following an eternal series of oscillations, each beginning with a Big Bang and ending with a Big Crunch; in the interim, the universe would expand for a period of time before the gravitational attraction of matter causes it to collapse back in and undergo a bounce.
Juan Martín Maldacena is an Argentine theoretical physicist and the Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has made significant contributions to the foundations of string theory and quantum gravity. His most famous discovery is the AdS/CFT correspondence, a realization of the holographic principle in string theory.
John Joseph Hopfield is an American scientist most widely known for his invention of an associative neural network in 1982. It is now more commonly known as the Hopfield network.
Robert Henry Dicke was an American astronomer and physicist who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, cosmology and gravity. He was the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University (1975–1984).
Gerald James Holton is an American physicist, historian of science, and educator, whose professional interests also include philosophy of science and the fostering of careers of young men and women. He is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science Emeritus at Harvard University. His contributions range from physical science and its history to their professional and public understanding, from studies on gender problems and ethics in science careers to those on the role of immigrants. These have been acknowledged by an unusually wide spectrum of appointments and honors, from physics to initiatives in education and other national, societal issues, to contributions for which he was selected, as the first scientist, to give the tenth annual Jefferson Lecture that the National Endowment for the Humanities describes as, “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished achievement in the humanities”.
Phillip James Edwin Peebles is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation.
Paul Joseph Steinhardt is an American theoretical physicist whose principal research is in cosmology and condensed matter physics. He is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University, where he is on the faculty of both the Departments of Physics and of Astrophysical Sciences.
Carl Henry Brans is an American mathematical physicist best known for his research into the theoretical underpinnings of gravitation elucidated in his most widely publicized work, the Brans–Dicke theory.
Robert M. Wald is an American theoretical physicist who studies general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity. He is also a textbook author.
Henry Burchard Fine was an American university dean and mathematician.
Martin Jesse Klein, usually cited as M. J. Klein, was a science historian of 19th and 20th century physics.
M. Zahid Hasan is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University. His primary research area is quantum physics and quantum topology.
The Princeton University Department of Mathematics is an academic department at Princeton University. Founded in 1760, the department has trained some of the world's most renowned and internationally recognized scholars of mathematics. Notable individuals affiliated with the department include John Nash, former faculty member and winner of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; Alan Turing, who received his doctorate from the department; and Albert Einstein who frequently gave lectures at Princeton and had an office in the building. Fields Medallists associated with the department include Manjul Bhargava, Charles Fefferman, Gerd Faltings, Michael Freedman, Elon Lindenstrauss, Andrei Okounkov, Terence Tao, William Thurston, Akshay Venkatesh, and Edward Witten. Many other Princeton mathematicians are noteworthy, including Ralph Fox, Donald C. Spencer, John R. Stallings, Norman Steenrod, John Tate, John Tukey, Arthur Wightman, and Andrew Wiles.
The Princeton University Department of Physics is an academic department dedicated to research and teaching at Princeton University. The associated faculty members, researchers, and students have been recognized for their research contributions, having been awarded 19 Nobel Prizes, four National Medals of Science, and two Wolf Prizes in Physics. Notable professors, researchers, and graduate students affiliated with the department include Richard Phillips Feynman, Joseph H. Taylor, Jim Peebles, Eugene P. Wigner, and John von Neumann. In addition, the department offers degree programs for bachelor's students (A.B.) and doctoral students (Ph.D.).
The Cyrus Fogg Brackett Chair of Physics is an endowed professorship established at Princeton University in 1927 by a donation from Thomas D. Jones in honor of Cyrus Fogg Brackett (1833–1915), who was a professor of physics at Princeton University and founder of Princeton University's electrical engineering department.