Sheldon Lee Glashow

Sheldon Lee Glashow (born December 5, 1932, New York) is an American physicist, professor, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg). Born in New York City, he was the son of Bobruisk-born Lewis Glukhovsky (1889-1961) and Bella Rubina (1893-1970), who founded a thriving plumbing repair office in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University (1954); MA (1955). Under the tutelage of future Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger, he completed and defended his doctoral thesis on "Vector meson in elementary particle decays" (1959) at Harvard University. Professor at Stanford University (1961-1962), the University of California at Berkeley (1962-1966) and Harvard University (since 1966). He worked in the field of elementary particle theory. Much of Glashow's work is devoted to the problem of combining all types of interactions observed in nature (strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational). The so-called gauge symmetry, used by him, allowed him to develop the theory of unification of electromagnetism and weak interaction (electroweak interaction) and to predict the presence of weak neutral currents between elementary particles. This contribution of the scientist was appreciated by the Nobel Committee, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Glashow also made a significant contribution to the understanding of the strong interaction of elementary particles by introducing a fourth (charmed) type of quarks. (The first three types of quarks - top, bottom and odd - were proposed in 1963 by physicists Murray Gel-Mann and George Zweig.) Thus, the scientists' foresight received experimental confirmation. After processing the results of a supernova explosion, Glashow reported his lower estimates of neutrino mass in 1987. In 1960, Glashow created the theory of electrically weak interactions, based on the ideas of gauge symmetry. For his contributions to the theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1979, together with Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg). Recipient of the Robert Oppenheimer Medal from the University of Miami (1977), the George Ledley Medal from Harvard University (1978), and the Oscar Klein Medal from Stockholm University (2017). Recipient of honorary degrees from Yeshiva University and Aix-Marseille Academy. Elected member of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1977). Foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1994).