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Rainer Weiss
Rainer Weiss · Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Person

Rainer Weiss

1932 – 2025 · aged 93

American physicist (1932–2025)

Born
29 Sept 1932 · Berlin
Died
25 Aug 2025 · Cambridge

Life timeline

Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.

Showing 107 years
  1. 29 Sept 1932BornBorn in Berlin
  2. 2007AwardEinstein Prize
  3. 2016AwardClarivate Citation Laureates
  4. 2016AwardGruber Prize in Cosmology
  5. 2016AwardHarvey Prize
  6. 2016AwardKavli Prize in Astrophysics
  7. 2016AwardThe Shaw Prize in Astronomy
  8. 2017AwardCocconi Prize
  9. 2017AwardNobel Prize in Physics
  10. 2018AwardHonorary doctor of the Eötvös Loránd University
  11. 2018AwardHonorary doctorate of the University of Almeria
  12. 2020AwardEhrenplakette der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
  13. 25 Aug 2025DiedDied in Cambridge

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Meanwhile in the world

Major world events during their lifetime (1932 – 2025).

  1. 1933 – 1945The Holocaust
  2. 19341934 FIFA World Cup
  3. 19361936 Summer Olympics
  4. 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese War
  5. 19381938 FIFA World Cup
  6. 1938Munich Agreement
  7. 1939 – 1940Winter War
  8. 1939 – 1945World War II
  9. 1940 – 1945Auschwitz concentration camp
  10. 1941Attack on Pearl Harbor
  11. 1941 – 1945Eastern Front
  12. 1941Operation Barbarossa
  13. 1942 – 1943Battle of Stalingrad
  14. 1945Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  15. 1945 – 1946Nuremberg trials
  16. 19501950 FIFA World Cup
  17. 1950 – 1953Korean War
  18. 1953 – 1959Cuban Revolution
  19. 19541954 FIFA World Cup
  20. 1955 – 1975Vietnam War
  21. 1956Hungarian Revolution of 1956
  22. 1956Suez Crisis
  23. 19581958 FIFA World Cup
  24. 1959Antarctic Treaty System
  25. 19621962 FIFA World Cup
  26. 1962Cuban Missile Crisis
  27. 19661966 FIFA World Cup
  28. 1966 – 1976Cultural Revolution
  29. 1968Prague Spring
  30. 1969Apollo 11 Moon landing
  31. 19721972 Summer Olympics
  32. 19741974 FIFA World Cup
  33. 19781978 FIFA World Cup
  34. 1978 – 1979Iranian Revolution
  35. 1979 – 1989Soviet–Afghan War
  36. 1980 – 1988Iran–Iraq War
  37. 19841984 Summer Olympics
  38. 1985Schengen Agreement
  39. 19891989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
  40. 1989Fall of the Berlin Wall

Biography

Rainer Weiss ( WYSSE, German: [vaɪs]; September 29, 1932 – August 25, 2025) was a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.

In 2017, Weiss was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

Weiss helped realize a number of challenging experimental tests of fundamental physics. He was a member of the Fermilab Holometer experiment, which uses a 40m laser interferometer to measure properties of space and time at quantum scale and provide Planck-precision tests of quantum holographic fluctuation.

Text from the Wikipedia article Rainer Weiss, CC BY-SA 4.0

About this information

Dates and life events come from this person’s Wikidata entry.

We only show events that the sources give a date for. Anything without a date is left out rather than guessed.