Hugh David Politzer

Hugh David Politzer
Born	31 August 1949 (1949-08-31) (age 62) New York City, U.S.
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics
Institutions	California Institute of Technology
Alma mater	University of Michigan Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Sidney Coleman
Known for	Quantum chromodynamics, asymptotic freedom
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (2004)

Hugh David Politzer (born 31 August 1949) is an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics with David Gross and Frank Wilczek for their discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics.

Life and career

Politzer was born in New York City in family of Hungarian descent. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1966, received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1969, and his PhD in 1974 from Harvard University, where his graduate advisor was Sidney Coleman.

In his first published article, which appeared in 1973, Politzer described the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom: the closer quarks are to each other, the weaker the strong interaction will be between them. When quarks are in extreme proximity, the nuclear force between them is so weak that they behave almost like free particles. This result—independently discovered at around the same time by Gross and Wilczek at Princeton University—was extremely important in the development of quantum chromodynamics. With Thomas Appelquist, Politzer also played a central role in predicting the existence of "charmonium", a subatomic particle formed of a charm quark and a charm antiquark.

Politzer was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1974 to 1977 before moving to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he is currently professor of theoretical physics. In 1989 he appeared in a minor role as Manhattan Project physicist Robert Serber in the movie Fat Man and Little Boy.

He was also the lead vocalist in the 1980s for Professor Politzer and the Rho Mesons, which put out their hit single, "The Simple Harmonic Oscillator" ^[1][2]

References

• Politzer, H.D. (1973). "Reliable Perturbative Results for Strong Interactions?". Physical Review Letters 30 (26): 1346. Bibcode 1973PhRvL..30.1346P. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.30.1346. 
• Politzer, H.D. (1974). "Asymptotic Freedom: An Approach to Strong Interactions". Physics Reports 14: 129. Bibcode 1974PhR....14..129D. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(74)90014-3. 

1. ^ http://theory.caltech.edu/people/politzer/SHO.mp3
2. ^ http://theory.caltech.edu/people/politzer/

External links

• Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
• Nobel Citation
• Nobel Lecture, "The Dilemma of Attribution" (pdf document. Adobe Acrobat required)
• List of papers, from SPIRES
• Webpage at Caltech
• Entry in IMDB
• Caltech press release on Politzer winning the Nobel Prize
• [1]

Persondata
Name	Politzer, H. David
Alternative names	Politzer, Hugh David
Short description	American Physicist
Date of birth	31 August 1949
Place of birth	New York City, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death