Harvard's Nobel Laureates in Physics

Roy J. Glauber enrolled at Harvard at age 16, just as the U.S. entered World War II. His studies were interrupted when he was recruited for the Manhattan Project, working on neutron diffusion. After completing a Ph.D. at Harvard, he taught at California Institute of Technology before returning to Harvard as a faculty member. Glauber’s research focused on three areas: nuclear scattering (Glauber approximation), statistical physics (Glauber dynamics), and his establishment of the foundation for quantum optics, for which he won a share of the 2005 Nobel Prize, alongside John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hansch.

Riccardo Giacconi spent his early life in Milan, Italy, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Milan. Much of his pioneering work with X-ray astronomy, including developing instruments to detect X-rays in space, was done at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The 2002 Nobel Prize recognized Giacconi’s for contributions to astrophysics alongside Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba.

Norman Ramsey earned his BA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. During World War II he advised War Secretary Stimson and joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Ramsey joined the faculty at Harvard, where he developed a program of theoretical and experimental research on magnetic interactions in molecules that led to his invention of the separated oscillatory field method, a technique important to the creation of precise atomic clocks, modern spectroscopy, and contemporary research in quantum physics. He shared his Nobel Prize with Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul.

Carlo Rubbia studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa before joining the newly-founded European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, where he worked on experiments on the structure of weak interactions. While continuing his research at CERN, Rubbia joined the faculty at Harvard. Rubbia shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Simon van der Meer for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles.

Nicolaas Bloembergen earned his physics degree from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his Ph.D. from Leiden University. He did much of his graduate research at Harvard, where he joined the faculty, studying nuclear magnetic resonance, quantum physics, masers, lasers, and nonlinear optics. In 1981, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn for contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy.

Steven Weinberg, who earned degrees from Cornell and Princeton, studied quantum field theory, the fundamental forces of nature, elementary particles, and cosmology. His most important research helped explain how the electromagnetic force and weak nuclear force are connected through the electroweak theory. Weinberg was a Harvard faculty member in 1979 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize alongside Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam.

Sheldon Glashow earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and both a master’s degree and Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University, where he returned to teach. Glashow studied theoretical physics and elementary particles and his research focused on quantum field theory and the interactions among the fundamental forces of nature. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam.

John H. Van Vleck earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. from Harvard, where he returned to teach. His research in the 1930s focused on how electrical fields in a crystal affect a foreign atom and how such an atom can be bound to nearby atoms through its electrons. When he was named along with Philip Warren Anderson and Sir Nevill Francis Mott as corecipient of the Nobel prize, the Swedish Academy of Sciences called Van Vleck the “father of modern magnetism.”

Julian Schwinger grew up in New York and received degrees from City College of New York and Columbia University. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley under J. Robert Oppenheimer before moving to Harvard to teach physics. His research focused on quantum electrodynamics and his 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared with Richard Feynman and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga.

Edward M. Purcell studied electrical engineering at Purdue University and physics at Harvard University. About the time Purcell returned to Harvard to teach, he discovered nuclear magnetic resonance absorption, which permits extremely accurate measurements of nuclear properties. He shared the 1952 Nobel Prize with Felix Bloch.

After receiving three degrees at Harvard, Percy W. Bridgman remained at the University to teach. Bridgman developed a sealing device that proved to be more effective than expected, which led him to develop equipment that could produce extremely high pressures. His discoveries made possible the artificial production of diamonds and other mineral forms. His book “The Physics of High Pressure” remains the outstanding work in the field.