Roman Jackiw (1939-2023), the Department of Physics Jerrold Zacharias chair and teacher emeritus. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Department of Physics
Over more than 50 years at MIT, he made basic contributions to quantum field theory and discovered geometric and topological phenomena.
Dirac Medalist and MIT professor emeritus Roman Jackiw, understood for his considerable contributions to quantum field theory, passed away at 83. His discoveries, consisting of the Adler– Bell– Jackiw anomalies, played a key role in shaping the Standard Model of particle physics, substantially impacting various fields such as particle physics, condensed matter physics, and gravitational physics.
Distinguished theoretical physicist and Dirac Medalist Roman Jackiw, MIT teacher emeritus and holder of the Department of Physics Jerrold Zacharias chair, passed away June 14 at age 83. He belonged to the MIT physics community for 54 years.
A leader in the sophisticated usage of quantum field theory to illuminate physical problems, his influential work on topology and anomalies in quantum field theory (QFT) underlies many aspects of theoretical physics today..
Iain Stewart, the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) director and Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professor of Science, states that Jackiw “worked as an inspiration for what one can attain as a theoretical physicist. He made profound contributions to physical issues in a vast array of areas, including particle physics, condensed matter physics, and gravitational physics.”.
” Professor Jackiw was a pioneer in the field of mathematical physics,” states Nergis Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the MIT School of Science. “His creative use of quantum field theory shed light on physical problems, including his work on topological solitons, field theory at heats, the presence of abnormalities, and the role of these abnormalities in particle physics.”.
States Frank Wilczek, a CTP colleague who is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics and a 2004 Nobel Laureate, “Roman Jackiw had a remarkable propensity for determining interests that have actually become fertile, dynamic areas of physics research study. His influential contributions to the theory of anomalies, the interplay of topology with quantum theory, and fractional quantum numbers are an abundant tradition which has actually become central to both basic physics and contemporary quantum engineering.”.
” He was a major, major figure in theoretical physics,” Wilczek stated to his audience at a conference he participated in a day after Jackiws death. “Roman was a leader in all these subjects, and advanced them considerably, before they became so popular.”.
He is renowned for his numerous essential contributions and discoveries in quantum and classical field theories. Among his major achievements is the facility of the existence of the famous Adler– Bell– Jackiw anomalies in quantum field theory, a discovery with significant implications for the structure of the Standard Model of particle physics and all efforts to exceed it.
Jackiw shared the Dirac Medal with Stephen Adler of Princeton University for their “celebrated triangle anomaly, among the most extensive examples of the significance of quantum field theory to the real life,” states the citation from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. “Jackiw made a major contribution to field theories pertinent to condensed matter physics in his discovery (with Boston Universitys Claudio Rebbi) of fractional charge and spin in these theories.” They got the medal in 1998 from the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy.
” Romans style was strenuous and mathematically sophisticated, but not pedantic,” says Robert L. Jaffe, the Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professor of Science, Post-Tenure. “After his early revolutionary work on the triangle abnormality, Roman for several years focused on the application of topological techniques in quantum field theory. Jackiw was not directly included in the creation of the Standard Model, which transformed physics in the last 3rd of the 20th century, the methods of analysis that Roman developed were typically necessary to its advancement.”.
Bolek Wyslouch, professor of physics and director of MITs Laboratory for Nuclear Science, calls Jackiw “an imposing figure in theoretical physics– one of the leaders that made MIT and the Center for Theoretical Physics worlds first … His foundational work was important in establishing the Standard Model of particle physics, among the most successful theories in physics.”.
Ukrainian roots.
Born Roman Volodymyr Yatskiv in Lubliniec, Poland, to a Ukrainian household in 1939, his name was Romanized to Jackiw..
” We remained in Poland up until it became clear that the Russians and the Communists would be the dominant force there, and … my father didnt desire to live under those conditions,” recalled Jackiw in an narrative history published by the American Institute of Physics. They went to live near his dads other children, in Austria, and eventually transferred to Germany before settling in New York City when Jackiw had to do with 10.
” I was sad to be leaving (Germany),” stated Jackiw. “Its a town called Dingolfing, most likely understood nowadays to vehicle enthusiasts because BMW began in Dingolfing, or had among its initial factories in Dingolfing.”.
In New York, he was informed by Xaverian monks in junior high, and Christian siblings in high school. Gamows “One Two Three … Infinity,” remembered Jackiw. “He explains people doing things that sounded remarkable to me and I wanted to do them.
After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1961, where he majored in physics with minors in history of science and mathematics, he went to Cornell University, where he worked with teachers Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson and got his PhD in 1966. Jackiw recalled working on a thesis that went versus Wilsons guidance..
” He desired me to use the renormalization group to discover the high-energy behavior of kind factors in electrodynamics. It ends up that the renormalization group doesnt manage that, but other approximations can be utilized to solve that issue, and I did. My thesis was released and its still described.”.
He had actually wished to work with Bethe, however Bethe was doing nuclear physics while Jackiw was more interested in particle physics. Nevertheless, Bethe asked him to co-author a textbook on quantum mechanics: “Intermediate Quantum Mechanics.” The popular book, most just recently revised in 2018, was for lots of years the fundamental introduction to the application of quantum mechanics to atomic physics..
From 1966 to 1969, he was a junior fellow at Harvard University. In his second year, he went to CERN, working with John Bell. “I discussed current algebra a lot with him,” Jackiw recalled, “and after that we fell under the problem of the decay of the neutral pion into 2 photons, which was a puzzle at that time, and we studied the residential or commercial properties of the axial vector present and found the axial vector existing anomaly, and wrote a paper, which is my most pointed out paper and likewise John Bells most-cited Particle Physics paper, in reality.”.
At the time, theory appeared to anticipate that the neutral pion could not decay into two photons, however the decay had been observed in experiments. With the Bell– Jackiw– Adler anomaly, clarified later by Stephen Adler, they “were able to describe the observed decays theoretically by including an anomalous term resulting from the divergences of quantum field theory,” according to an short article in Physics World..
In his last year at Harvard, Jackiw had actually been working with other theorists at MIT. Physics professors Steven Weinberg and Sergio Fubini, together with physics department head Victor Weisskopf, helped to start Jackiws long career as a teacher at the Institute, which began in 1969. In his very first years at MIT, Jackiw and David Gross revealed that cancellation of gauge anomalies suggested a fascinating connection in between fermions in the Standard Model– in specific, that fermions in 2 classes, those which are strongly engaging and those which are not, have to appear the same variety of times. Over the years this cancellation continued to suggest the existence of brand-new fermions before they were observed.
Jackiw held checking out professorships at Rockefeller University in 1977-78, at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1980, and at Columbia University in 1989-90. He ended up being an emeritus teacher in 2013.
An unusual type of success.
Jackiw had stated he had two bodies of work. Pi, currently a Boston University physics teacher emerita, is a recognized physicist who was a co-author on numerous of Jackiws documents, and is Jackiws widow.
” But on the other hand, Ive likewise done type of methodological examinations, which werent always initial but used existing plans to brand-new context. Like for example, figuring out how to do quantum field theory at limited temperature and relativistic quantum field theory at finite temperature, taking control of what they perform in condensed matter physics and non-relativistic quantum field theory method to condensed matter physics at finite temperature level.”.
Jackiw was known for working on mathematically complex physics without an application in mind. “What Ive always liked is to do work which seems fascinating however odd, and then years later it captures on,” he said.
” Roman Jackiw was a giant of theoretical physics, but of a rather unusual kind,” recalls Daniel Harlow, the Jerrold R. Zacharias Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Center for Theoretical Physics. “He was hardly ever working on the same thing as others, and undoubtedly if something he was doing began capturing on then he would often turn to something else. And yet his ideas had a method of growing up: He would leave them lying around, and after that a decade or more later everybody else would recognize that he had actually been on to something.”.
Harlow as soon as asked him why he had been studying gravity in two spacetime measurements. “His response: Well, everyone else was believing about gravity in more than 4 measurements, so I figured I d see what takes place in fewer than four.”.
” His work on low-dimensional gravity from the 1980s has actually removed in the last five years,” says Harlow. “His impact will be felt both here at MIT and all over the world for generations.”.
David Kaiser, a physics teacher and the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science, says that, while working with a CTP doctoral candidate, “It appears like every other day we find that Roman had actually first published on this-or-that piece of what we are trying to figure out, lots of years earlier, in greater generality and with far more elegance than we had ever aimed to. He and his work remain a significant inspiration for us.”.
Besides Jackiws celebrated work on abnormalities, other essential examples of his contributions consist of providing the first example of charge and spin fractionalization with solitons, illuminating the periodic vacuum structure of the non-abelian gauge theories that form the core of the Standard Model of particle physics, releasing the use of quantum field theory for the strenuous study of systems at finite temperature, and identifying the nature of Chern-Simons terms for both gauge and gravitational theories.
This broad variety of research affected many others. “To get an appreciation of Romans influence on theoretical and mathematical physics, one need only look at how typically individuals describe him by name in their documents, with examples including Adler-Bell-Jackiw abnormalities, Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity, Fadeev-Jackiw quantization, the Jackiw-Nohl-Ressen ansatz, and the Jackiw-Rossi, Jackiw-Rebbi, and Jackiw-Pi designs,” says Stewart.
Roman had over 30 PhD students, consisting of Estia Eichten (Cornell), Joseph Lykken (Fermilab), and Andrew Strominger (Harvard); he was “a very effective coach to generations of PhD students who formed a school of theoretical physics concentrated on making use of sophisticated mathematical methods to check out the physical material of quantum field theories,” recalls Jaffe.
Other honors and awards.
From 1969 to 1971, Jackiw was honored as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and from 1977 to 1978 as a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow. In 1995 Jackiw received the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society “for his creative use of quantum field theory to clarify physical problems, including his work on topological solitons, field theory at high temperatures, the presence of anomalies, and the function of these abnormalities in particle physics.” In 2007 he received the Bonnor Essay Prize from Queen Mary University of London.
He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. Honorary doctorates were likewise granted by Turin University, Italy; Uppsala University, Sweden; the Kyiv Bogolyubov Institute, Ukraine; and Montréal University, Canada.
Teacher Jackiw composed 6 other books: “Lectures on Current Algebra and its Applications” (with S. Treiman and D. Gross); “Dynamical Gauge Symmetry Breaking” (with E. Farhi) 1982; “Shelter Island II” (with N. Khuri, S. Weinberg and E. Witten) 1985; “Current Algebra and Anomalies” (With S. Treiman. B. Zumino and E. Witten) 1985; “Diverse Topics in Mathematical and theoretical Physics,” 1995; and “Lectures on Fluid Dynamics,” 2002.
” I have enormous regard for his tradition and accomplishment, and greatly value the doors he has opened for the rest of us,” states Stewart.
He is endured by his partner, So-Young Pi, and 3 kids: Stefan Jackiw, a violinist; Nicholas Jackiw, a software application designer; and Simone Ahlborn, a teacher at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island. Funeral services will be private.
Roman Jackiw (1939-2023), the Department of Physics Jerrold Zacharias chair and professor emeritus. Jackiw shared the Dirac Medal with Stephen Adler of Princeton University for their “well known triangle anomaly, one of the most extensive examples of the relevance of quantum field theory to the genuine world,” states the citation from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. He had actually desired to work with Bethe, but Bethe was doing nuclear physics while Jackiw was more interested in particle physics. Pi, presently a Boston University physics teacher emerita, is a recognized physicist who was a co-author on many of Jackiws papers, and is Jackiws widow.
” Roman Jackiw was a giant of theoretical physics, however of a rather uncommon kind,” recalls Daniel Harlow, the Jerrold R. Zacharias Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Center for Theoretical Physics.