Lisa Randall

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Lisa Randall
Lisa randall by christopher michel 02.jpg
Born (1962-06-18) June 18, 1962 (age 62)
Alma mater Harvard University (BA, PhD)
Known forRandall–Sundrum model
Warped Passages (2005)
Awards Klopsteg Memorial Award (2006)
Lilienfeld Prize (2007)
Andrew Gemant Award (2012)
Sakurai Prize (2019)
Oskar Klein Medal (2019)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsLawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
Princeton University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Doctoral advisor Howard Georgi
Doctoral students Csaba Csáki

Lisa Randall HonFInstP (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist and Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. [1] Her research includes the fundamental forces of nature and dimensions of space. She studies the Standard Model, supersymmetry, possible solutions to the hierarchy problem concerning the relative weakness of gravity, cosmology of dimensions, baryogenesis, cosmological inflation, and dark matter. [2] She contributed to the Randall–Sundrum model, first published in 1999 with Raman Sundrum. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Randall was born in Queens, New York City, New York. [4] She graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1980, [5] where she was a classmate of fellow physicist and science popularizer Brian Greene. [6] She won first place in the 1980 Westinghouse Science Talent Search at the age of 18 and was also named a National Merit Scholar. She attended Harvard University, where she took Math 55, [7] earned a BA in physics in 1983 and a PhD in theoretical particle physics in 1987 under Howard Georgi. [1]

Academia

Randall researches particle physics and cosmology at Harvard, where she is a professor of theoretical physics. Her research concerns elementary particles and fundamental forces, and has involved the study of a wide variety of models, the most recent involving dimensions. She has also worked on supersymmetry, Standard Model observables, cosmological inflation, baryogenesis, grand unified theories, and general relativity.

After her graduate work at Harvard, Randall held professorships at MIT and Princeton University before returning to Harvard in 2001. [8] Professor Randall was the first tenured woman in the Princeton physics department and the first tenured female theoretical physicist at Harvard. (Melissa Franklin was the first tenured woman in the Harvard physics department.) [9] [10]

Writing

Randall's books Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions and Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World have both been on New York Times 100 notable books lists. [1]

Between the hardback and paperback release of Knocking on Heaven's Door, the quest for the discovery of the Higgs boson was actually completed, a subject discussed in the book. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider found a particle identified as the Higgs boson. [11] [12] She said about the discovery, that even if people don't understand everything about it, "what an exciting thing it is that people are excited that there is something fundamentally new that has been discovered." [13] Randall has an e-book entitled Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space. Before the Large Hadron Collider was operating, she wrote an article explaining the discoveries that were expected from using it. [14] She was commonly asked about the misconception that the LHC could make black holes that could destroy the planet. [15] She answered that it was "not even conceivable unless space and gravity are very different from what we thought." [14]

Randall wrote the libretto of the opera Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes on the invitation of the composer, Hèctor Parra, who was inspired by her book Warped Passages. [16]

Professional organizations

Randall is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004) and the National Academy of Sciences (2008), [2] the American Philosophical Society, [17] and a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Randall has helped organize numerous conferences and has been on the editorial board of several major theoretical physics journals. [1] [8]

Awards and honors

In autumn 2004, she was the most cited theoretical physicist of the previous five years. Randall was featured in Seed magazine's "2005 Year in Science Icons" and in Newsweek 's "Who's Next in 2006" as "one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation". In 2007, Randall was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People (Time 100) under the section for "Scientists & Thinkers". Randall was given this honor for her work regarding the evidence of a higher dimension. [18]

Other honors:

Belief in God

In an interview she was asked whether she believes in God, she said:

"... I probably don't believe in God. I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. This might earn me some enemies, but in some ways they may be even more moral. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons." [29]

Personal life

Randall's sister, Dana Randall, is a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech. [30]

Lisa is an avid climber. [31] A rockface along the Mill Creek near Dumont in Colorado, is named Lisa Randall Wall after her by a local climbing society. [32] In a climbing accident, after falling from the cliff despite proper safety measures, she injured her heel. [33]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

In physics, the fundamental interactions or fundamental forces are the interactions that do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions. There are four fundamental interactions known to exist:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elementary particle</span> Subatomic particle having no known substructure

In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. The Standard Model presently recognizes seventeen distinct particles—twelve fermions and five bosons. As a consequence of flavor and color combinations and antimatter, the fermions and bosons are known to have 48 and 13 variations, respectively. Among the 61 elementary particles embraced by the Standard Model number: electrons and other leptons, quarks, and the fundamental bosons. Subatomic particles such as protons or neutrons, which contain two or more elementary particles, are known as composite particles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particle physics</span> Study of subatomic particles and forces

Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics.

In physics, Randall–Sundrum models are models that describe the world in terms of a warped-geometry higher-dimensional universe, or more concretely as a 5-dimensional anti-de Sitter space where the elementary particles are localized on a (3 + 1)-dimensional brane or branes.

<i>Warped Passages</i> Book by Lisa Randall

Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions is the debut non-fiction book by Lisa Randall, published in 2005, about particle physics in general and additional dimensions of space in particular. The book has made it to top 50 at amazon.com, making it the world's first successful book on theoretical physics by a female author. She herself characterizes the book as being about physics and the multi-dimensional universe. The book describes, at a non-technical level, theoretical models Professor Randall developed with the physicist Raman Sundrum, in which various aspects of particle physics are explained in a higher-dimensional braneworld scenario. These models have since generated thousands of citations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Spiropulu</span> Greek physicist

Maria Spiropulu is a Greek particle physicist. She is the Shang-Yi Ch'en Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raman Sundrum</span> Indian-American theoretical particle physicist

Raman Sundrum is an Indian-American theoretical particle physicist. He contributed to the field with a class of models called the Randall–Sundrum models, first published in 1999 with Lisa Randall. Sundrum is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and the director of Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physics beyond the Standard Model</span> Theories trying to extend known physics

Physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) refers to the theoretical developments needed to explain the deficiencies of the Standard Model, such as the inability to explain the fundamental parameters of the standard model, the strong CP problem, neutrino oscillations, matter–antimatter asymmetry, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Another problem lies within the mathematical framework of the Standard Model itself: the Standard Model is inconsistent with that of general relativity, and one or both theories break down under certain conditions, such as spacetime singularities like the Big Bang and black hole event horizons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Englert</span> Belgian theoretical physicist

François, Baron Englert is a Belgian theoretical physicist and 2013 Nobel Prize laureate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Lykken</span>

Joseph David Lykken is an American theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and, from July 1, 2014 to Sept 6, 2022, he was the Deputy Director of Fermilab. He is currently Director of Fermilab's Quantum Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Higgs boson</span> Elementary particle involved with rest mass

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 Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge that couples to mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately upon generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabiola Gianotti</span> Italian physicist, director general of the European Council for Nuclear Research

Fabiola Gianotti is an Italian experimental particle physicist who is the current and first woman Director-General at CERN in Switzerland. Her first mandate began on 1 January 2016 and ran for a period of five years. At its 195th Session in 2019, the CERN Council selected Gianotti for a second term as Director-General. Her second five-year term began on 1 January 2021 and goes on until 2025. This is the first time in CERN's history that a Director-General has been appointed for a full second term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Lincoln</span> American physicist

Don Lincoln is an American physicist, author, host of the YouTube channel Fermilab, and science communicator. He conducts research in particle physics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and was an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, although he is no longer affiliated with the university. He received a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from Rice University in 1994. In 1995, he was a co-discoverer of the top quark. He has co-authored hundreds of research papers, and more recently, was a member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guido Tonelli</span> Italian particle physicist

Guido Tonelli is an Italian particle physicist who was involved with the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. He is a professor of General Physics at the University of Pisa (Italy) and a CERN visiting scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sau Lan Wu</span> American physicist

Sau Lan Wu is a Chinese American particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important contributions towards the discovery of the J/psi particle, which provided experimental evidence for the existence of the charm quark, and the gluon, the vector boson of the strong force in the Standard Model of physics. Recently, her team located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), using data collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was part of the international effort in the discovery of a boson consistent with the Higgs boson.

<i>Particle Fever</i> 2013 film by Mark Levinson

Particle Fever is a 2013 American documentary film tracking the first round of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. The film follows the experimental physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) who run the experiments, as well as the theoretical physicists who attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the LHC's results. The film begins in 2008 with the first firing of the LHC and concludes in 2012 with the successful identification of the Higgs boson.

<i>Knocking on Heavens Door</i> (book) Book by Lisa Randall

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World is the second non-fiction book by Lisa Randall. It was initially published on September 20, 2011, by Ecco Press. The title is explained in the text: "Scientists knock on heaven's door in an attempt to cross the threshold separating the known from the unknown."

<i>Higgs Discovery</i> Book by Lisa Randall

Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space is a short non-fiction book by Lisa Randall, in which she concentrates on the ideas discussed in her two previous books. Higgs Discovery was initially published on September 24, 2013 by Ecco Press.

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Andrei V. Gritsan is an American-Siberian particle physicist. He was a member of a team of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider, who, in 2012, announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle, a Higgs boson.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Faculty: Lisa Randall". Harvard University Department of Physics. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  2. 1 2 "Lisa Randall". NAS. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  3. Randall, Lisa; Sundrum, Raman (1999). "Large Mass Hierarchy from a Small Extra Dimension". Physical Review Letters . 83 (17): 3370–3373. arXiv: hep-ph/9905221 . Bibcode:1999PhRvL..83.3370R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.3370.
  4. Crace, John (June 21, 2005). "Lisa Randall: Warped view of the universe". The Guardian. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  5. "Lisa Randall". Edge Foundation. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  6. "The String is The Thing Brian Greene Unravels the Fabric of the Universe". Columbia Magazine. Columbia University. Archived from the original on September 24, 2006. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  7. Robinson, Evan T.R. (June 2, 2009). "Class of 1984: Lisa Randall". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved December 9, 2018. As a college freshman, Lisa J. Randall '84 stood out for many reasons. In her first semester, she enrolled in Math 55 and Physics 55, the most difficult freshman math and physics classes offered.
  8. 1 2 "Curriculum Vitae of Lisa Randall". Harvard University — Department of Physics. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  9. "Professor Franklin". Harvard University.
  10. "Notable Female Physicists". weebly.com. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  11. CERN. "The Higgs Boson" . Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  12. Greene, Brian. "How the Higgs Boson was Found". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  13. "Point of Inquiry podcast". Point of Inquiry 8 Oct 2012. Center for Inquiry. 2012-10-08. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  14. 1 2 Randall, Lisa. "A Tumultuous Year at the LHC". Discover magazine, 12 Nov 2009. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  15. Pappas, Stephanie (2012-10-21). "Large Hadron Collider Won't Destroy Earth With Planet-Eating Black Hole, Court Says". Huffington Post, 19 Oct 2012. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  16. "Opera in the Fifth Dimension". Seed Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 June 2016. Retrieved 8 December 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  17. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
  18. Rawe, Julie. "Time 100". Time magazine May 14, 2007: 108.
  19. "2018 Stanley Corrsin Award Recipient".
  20. "Theoretical Physicist Lisa Randall Wins 2012 Gemant Award". www.aip.org. 2013-11-22. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  21. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  22. "2018 Stanley Corrsin Award Recipient". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  23. "Part 1: Not Just Marie Curie - Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology - Simon Fraser University". www.sfu.ca. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  24. "AAPT Announces 2011 Klopsteg Memorial Award Winner is Dr. James E. Hansen". Physics Today. 2011-06-15. doi:10.1063/PT.4.0365.
  25. "Klopsteg Memorial Lecture". aapt.org. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  26. "Lisa Randall | Edge.org". www.edge.org. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  27. "Recipient". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  28. "NSF Award Search: Award#9257439 - NSF Young Investigator". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  29. Powell, Corey S. "The Discovery Interview: Lisa Randall". Discover Magazine, 29 July 2006. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
  30. "Class of 1984: Lisa Randall Randall's Theory Increases Number of Dimensions in Physical Universe". Harvard Crimson . Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  31. Ganahl, Jane (Sep 1, 2005). "Confused by the whole shebang? She'll explain". SFGATE. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  32. "Rock Climbing in Lisa Randall Wall, Dumont vicinity". Mountain Project. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  33. Crace, John (21 June 2005). "Lisa Randall: Warped view of the universe". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2024.

Media

Publications