David Kaiser (physicist)

Last updated
David Kaiser
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materDartmouth College (A.B. 1993)
Harvard University (Ph.D 1997, 2000)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
History of science
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Website http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/

David I. Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a full professor in MIT's department of physics. He also served as an inaugural associate dean for MIT's cross-disciplinary program in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing. [1]

Contents

Kaiser is the author or editor of several books on the history of science, including Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (2005), How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (2011), [2] and Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World (2020). [3] He received the Apker Award [4] from the American Physical Society in 1993 and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010. His historical scholarship has been honored with the Pfizer Award (2007) [5] and the Davis Prize (2013) [6] from the History of Science Society. In March 2012 he was awarded the MacVicar fellowship, a prestigious MIT undergraduate teaching award. [7] In 2012, he also received the Frank E. Perkins Award from MIT for excellence in mentoring graduate students. [8]

Education

Kaiser completed his AB in physics at Dartmouth College in 1993. He completed two PhDs from Harvard University. The first was in physics in 1997 for a thesis entitled "Post-Inflation Reheating in an Expanding Universe," the second in the history of science in 2000 for a thesis on "Making Theory: Producing Physics and Physicists in Postwar America." [1]

Research

Kaiser's physics research mostly focuses on early-universe cosmology, including topics such as cosmic inflation, [9] [10] post-inflation reheating, [11] [12] [13] and primordial black holes. [14] [15] [16] He has also helped to design and conduct novel experimental tests of quantum theory, including the "Cosmic Bell" experiments [17] [18] [19] that Kaiser worked on with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger, [20] and which were featured in the PBS Nova documentary film Einstein's Quantum Riddle (2019). [21]

Kaiser's historical research focuses on intersections among modern natural sciences, geopolitics, and the history of higher education during the Cold War. His MIT course on "Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the Twentieth Century" is available via MIT OpenCourseWare.

In addition to his scholarly writing, Kaiser's work has appeared in The New York Times , [22] [23] [24] [25] the New Yorker magazine, [26] [27] [28] and in several PBS Nova television programs. [29] He also serves as Chair of the Editorial Board of the MIT Press and as Editor of the MIT Case Studies Series on Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing.

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical cosmology</span> Branch of cosmology which studies mathematical models of the universe

Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood.

In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch is believed to have lasted from 10−36 seconds to between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. The re-acceleration of this slowing expansion due to dark energy began after the universe was already over 7.7 billion years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum gravity</span> Description of gravity using discrete values

Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vicinity of black holes or similar compact astrophysical objects, such as neutron stars as well as in the early stages of the universe moments after the Big Bang.

The ekpyrotic universe is a cosmological model of the early universe that explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. The model has also been incorporated in the cyclic universe theory, which proposes a complete cosmological history, both the past and future.

The Big Bounce hypothesis is a cosmological model for the origin of the known universe. It was originally suggested as a phase of the cyclic model or oscillatory universe interpretation of the Big Bang, where the first cosmological event was the result of the collapse of a previous universe. It receded from serious consideration in the early 1980s after inflation theory emerged as a solution to the horizon problem, which had arisen from advances in observations revealing the large-scale structure of the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Susskind</span> American theoretical physicist (born 1940)

Leonard Susskind is an American theoretical physicist, Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests are string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Micro black holes, also called mini black holes or quantum mechanical black holes, are hypothetical tiny black holes, for which quantum mechanical effects play an important role. The concept that black holes may exist that are smaller than stellar mass was introduced in 1971 by Stephen Hawking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">False vacuum</span> Hypothetical vacuum, less stable than true vacuum

In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a hypothetical vacuum that is relatively stable, but not in the most stable state possible. In this condition it is called metastable. It may last for a very long time in this state, but could eventually decay to the more stable one, an event known as false vacuum decay. The most common suggestion of how such a decay might happen in our universe is called bubble nucleation – if a small region of the universe by chance reached a more stable vacuum, this "bubble" would spread.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Sarfatti</span> American theoretical physicist

Jack Sarfatti is an American theoretical physicist. Working largely outside academia, most of Sarfatti's publications revolve around quantum physics and consciousness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Herbert (physicist)</span> American physicist and author (born 1936)

Nick Herbert is an American physicist and author, best known for his book Quantum Reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational-wave astronomy</span> Branch of astronomy using gravitational waves

Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging field of science, concerning the observations of gravitational waves to collect relatively unique data and make inferences about objects such as neutron stars and black holes, events such as supernovae, and processes including those of the early universe shortly after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subir Sachdev</span> Indian physicist

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018, and was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society ForMemRS in 2023. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2017–2019, and is Editor-in-Chief of Reports on Progress in Physics 2022-.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primordial black hole</span> Hypothetical black hole formed soon after the Big Bang

In cosmology, primordial black holes (PBHs) are hypothetical black holes that formed soon after the Big Bang. In the inflationary era and early radiation-dominated universe, extremely dense pockets of subatomic matter may have been tightly packed to the point of gravitational collapse, creating primordial black holes without the supernova compression typically needed to make black holes today. Because the creation of primordial black holes would pre-date the first stars, they are not limited to the narrow mass range of stellar black holes.

David Tong is a British theoretical physicist. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge, working in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). He is also a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His research mainly concerns quantum field theory. He is the joint recipient of the 2008 Adams Prize and is currently a Simons Investigator. He is also known for his outreach activities and for his freely available lecture notes covering a wide range of topics in physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikodem Popławski</span> Polish physicist

Nikodem Janusz Popławski is a Polish theoretical physicist, most widely noted for the hypothesis that every black hole could be a doorway to another universe and that the universe was formed within a black hole which itself exists in a larger universe. This hypothesis was listed by National Geographic and Science magazines among their top ten discoveries of 2010.

The Fundamental Fysiks Group was founded in San Francisco in May 1975 by two physicists, Elizabeth Rauscher and George Weissmann, at the time both graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The group held informal discussions on Friday afternoons to explore the philosophical implications of quantum theory. Leading members included Fritjof Capra, John Clauser, Philippe Eberhard, Nick Herbert, Jack Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Henry Stapp, and Fred Alan Wolf.

Katelin Schutz is an American particle physicist known for using cosmological observations to study dark sectors, that is new particles and forces that interact weakly with the visible world. She was a NASA Einstein Fellow and Pappalardo Fellow in the MIT Department of Physics and is currently an assistant professor of physics at McGill University.

The Buchalter Cosmology Prize, established in 2014, is a prestigious annual prize bestowed by Dr. Ari Buchalter.

References

  1. 1 2 Kaiser CV, MIT, accessed January 13, 2023; "Short biography", MIT, accessed January 13, 2023.
  2. ↑ Hugh Gusterson, "Physics: Quantum outsiders", Nature, 476, 278–279, August 18, 2011.
    George Johnson, "What Physics Owes the Counterculture", The New York Times, June 17, 2011.
  3. ↑ Phillip Ball, "Quantum inheritance and the ongoing quest for meaning", Physics World, 47-48, May 18, 2020.
  4. ↑ American Physical Society, "LeRoy Apker Award: An Undergraduate Physics Achievement Award", accessed January 13, 2023.
  5. ↑ History of Science Society, "Pfizer Award".
  6. ↑ History of Science Society, "Davis Prize".
  7. ↑ Jesse Kirkpatrick, "Four MacVicar Recipients", The Tech, 132(13).
  8. ↑ MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, "David Kaiser receives Frank E. Perkins Award" (2012).
  9. ↑ Alan H. Guth and David I. Kaiser, "Inflationary Cosmology: Exploring the Universe from the Smallest to the Largest Scales", Science 307, 884-890 (February 2005), arXiv:astro-ph/0502328.
  10. ↑ Alan H. Guth, David I. Kaiser, and Yasunori Nomura, "Inflationary Paradigm After Planck 2013", Physics Letters B 733, 112-119 (2014), arXiv:1312.7619
  11. ↑ Mustafa A. Amin, Mark P. Hertzberg, David I. Kaiser, and Johanna Karouby, "Nonperturbative Dynamics of Reheating After Inflation: A Review", International Journal of Modern Physics D 24, 1530003 (2015), arXiv:1410.3808.
  12. ↑ Rachel Nguyen, Jorinde van de Vis, Evangelos I. Sfakianakis, John T. Giblin Jr., and David I. Kaiser, "Nonlinear Dynamics of Preheating after Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings", Physical Review Letters 123, 171301 (2019), arXiv:1905.12562.
  13. ↑ Rouzbeh Allahverdi et al., "The First Three Seconds: A Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe", Open Journal of Astrophysics 4 (2021), arXiv:2006.16182.
  14. ↑ Sarah R. Geller, Wenzer Qin, Evan McDonough, and David I. Kaiser, "Primordial Black Holes from Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings", Physical Review D 106, 063535 (2022), arXiv:2205.04471.
  15. ↑ Wenzer Qin, Sarah R. Geller, Shyam Balaji, Evan McDonough, and David I. Kaiser, "Planck constraints and gravitational wave forecasts for primordial black hole dark matter seeded by multifield inflation", Physical Review D 108, 043508 (2023), arXiv:2303.02168.
  16. ↑ David Kaiser, "Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter Candidates", Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University, December 12, 2022.
  17. ↑ Johannes Handsteiner et al., "Cosmic Bell Test: Measurement Settings from Milky Way Stars", Physical Review Letters 118, 060401 (2017)
  18. ↑ Dominik Rauch et al., "Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars", Physical Review Letters 121, 080403 (2018).
  19. ↑ David Kaiser, "Quantum Theory by Starlight", New Yorker, February 7, 2017.
  20. ↑ David Kaiser, "They probed quantum entanglement while everyone shrugged", Nautilus, October 5, 2022.
  21. ↑ NOVA PBS (January 9, 2019). "Einstein's Quantum Riddle". YouTube. WGBH Educational Foundation.
  22. ↑ David Kaiser, "I Didn't Write That", New York Times, November 3, 2012.
  23. ↑ David Kaiser, "Is Quantum Entanglement Real?", New York Times, November 14, 2014.
  24. ↑ David Kaiser, "How Politics Shaped General Relativity", New York Times, November 6, 2015.
  25. ↑ David Kaiser, "Learning from Gravitational Waves", New York Times, October 3, 2017.
  26. ↑ David Kaiser, "A Physicist's Farewell to Stephen Hawking", New Yorker, March 15, 2018.
  27. ↑ David Kaiser, "Free Will, Video Games, and the Most Profound Quantum Mystery", New Yorker, May 9, 2018.
  28. ↑ David Kaiser, "Freeman Dyson's Letters Offer Another Glimpse of Genius", New Yorker, March 5, 2020.
  29. ↑ David Kaiser, "Public Broadcasting Appearances".

Further reading


Kepler-solar-system-2.gif

This biographical article about an American historian of science is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.