Biography:Roman Jackiw

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Roman Jackiw
Jackiw in 2013
Born(1939-11-08)8 November 1939
Lubliniec, General Government (now Poland)
Died14 June 2023(2023-06-14) (aged 83)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma materSwarthmore College (BA)
Cornell University (PhD)
Known forAdler–Bell–Jackiw anomaly
Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity
Theta vacuum
ChildrenStefan Jackiw
Nicholas Jackiw
AwardsDirac Medal (1998)
Heineman Prize (1995)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsMIT
ThesisNonperturbative solutions of the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the vertex function (1966)
Doctoral advisorHans Bethe
Kenneth G. Wilson
Doctoral studentsAndrea diSessa
Andrew Strominger
Joseph Lykken

Roman Wladimir Jackiw[lower-alpha 1] (/ˈroʊmɑːn ˈdʒɑːkiːv/; pol; November 8, 1939 – June 14, 2023) was an American theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist.

Early life and education

Born in Lubliniec, Poland in 1939[1] to a Ukrainian family, the family later moved to Austria and Germany before settling in New York City when Jackiw was about 10.[2]

Jackiw earned his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and his PhD from Cornell University in 1966 under Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Theoretical Physics from 1969 until his retirement. He retained his affiliation in emeritus status in 2019.[3]

Career

After earning his PhD from Cornell University in 1966, Roman Jackiw held a junior fellowship at Harvard University from 1966 to 1969.[4] In 1969, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, later progressing to associate and then full professor.[5] He was subsequently named the Jerrold R. Zacharias Professor of Physics, a role he retained until retiring.[4]

Jackiw became professor emeritus in 2013 and continued his research activities at MIT until his death on June 14, 2023.[4] During his career, he also held visiting positions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a visiting professorship at Rockefeller University from 1977 to 1978.[5]

Research Contributions

Jackiw co-discovered the chiral anomaly, which is also known as the Adler–Bell–Jackiw anomaly. In 1969, he and John Stewart Bell published their explanation, which was later expanded and clarified by Stephen L. Adler, of the observed decay of a neutral pion into two photons. A symmetry of classical electrodynamics forbids this decay, but Bell and Jackiw showed that this symmetry cannot be preserved at the quantum level. Their introduction of an "anomalous" term from quantum field theory required that the sum of the charges of the elementary fermions had to be zero. This work also gave important support to the colour theory of quarks.[6]

Jackiw is also known for Jackiw–Teitelboim gravity, often abbreviated as JT Gravity, a theory of gravity with one dimension each of space and time that includes a dilaton field. Sometimes known as the R = T model, it is used to model some aspects of near-extremal black holes.[7]

Personal life

Jackiw married fellow physicist So-Young Pi, daughter of Korean writer Pi Chun-deuk. One of Jackiw's sons is Stefan Jackiw, an American violinist. The other is Nicholas Jackiw, a software designer known for inventing The Geometer's Sketchpad. [8]His daughter, Simone Ahlborn, is an educator at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island.

Jackiw died 14 June 2023, at the age of 83.[9]

Awards

Notes

  1. ↑ Ukrainian: Роман Володимир Яцків, romanized: Roman Volodymyr Yatskiv

References

  1. ↑ Kubiĭovych, Volodymyr; Struk, Danylo Husar (1984). Encyclopedia of Ukraine. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802034441. https://books.google.com/books?id=REcOAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Jackiw,+Roman%22+1939. 
  2. ↑ Oral History Transcript — Dr. Roman Jackiw American Institute of Physics (5 August 2010)
  3. ↑ "MIT Department of Physics Faculty". http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/jackiw_roman.html. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 admin (2023-06-20). "Professor Emeritus Roman Jackiw, “giant of theoretical physics,” dies at 83" (in en-US). https://physics.mit.edu/news/professor-emeritus-roman-jackiw-giant-of-theoretical-physics-dies-at-83/. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Roman Jackiw" (in en). 2023-12-01. https://physicstoday.aip.org/obituaries/roman-jackiw. 
  6. ↑ Jackiw, R.; Rebbi, C. (1976-07-19). "Vacuum Periodicity in a Yang-Mills Quantum Theory" (in en-US). Physical Review Letters 37 (3): 172–175. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.37.172. ISSN 0031-9007. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.37.172. 
  7. ↑ Stanford, Douglas; Witten, Edward (7 July 2019). "JT Gravity and the Ensembles of Random Matrix Theory". arXiv:1907.03363 [hep-th].
  8. ↑ "The Sketchpad Story - The Geometer's Sketchpad Resource Center". https://www.dynamicgeometry.com/General_Resources/The_Sketchpad_Story.html. 
  9. ↑ Chakrabarty, Deepto (June 15, 2023). "In Memoriam: Roman Jackiw, Jerrold Zacharias Professor of Physics Emeritus (1939-2023)". https://physics.mit.edu/news/in-memoriam-roman-jackiw-jerrold-zacharias-professor-of-physics-emeritus-1939-2023/. 
  10. ↑ "Honorary doctorates - Uppsala University, Sweden". 9 June 2023. http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/traditions/prizes/honorary-doctorates/. 



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