- 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics
Intro
American experimental physicist, Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus at California Institute of Technology. He is a leading expert on gravitational waves. In 2017, Barish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
Education and Work Experience
1957-1966, B.A., Ph.D, Postdoctoral in Physics, University of California, Berkeley 1966-2005, Associate Professor, Professor, Linde Professor Emeritus, Caltech 2005-Present, Principal Investigator of LIGO
2011, President of the American Physical Society
Honors and Awards
1957-1966, B.A., Ph.D, Postdoctoral in Physics, University of California, Berkeley 1966-2005, Associate Professor, Professor, Linde Professor Emeritus, Caltech 2005-Present, Principal Investigator of LIGO
2011, President of the American Physical Society
Major Academic Achievements
One consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the existence of gravitational waves. Beginning in the 1970s the LIGO detector was developed to record gravitational waves. Barish had a leading role in the project from 1994 and made crucial contributions to the development of the detector. In 2015 gravitational waves were detected for the first time.
From 2005 to 2013, Barish was Director of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC is the highest priority future project for particle physics worldwide, as it promises to complement the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in exploring the TeV energy scale. This ambitious effort is being uniquely coordinated worldwide, representing a major step in international collaborations going from conception to design
to implementation for large scale projects in physics.