Roman Jackiw

Roman W. Jackiw is a theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist. Born in Poland, Jackiw received his PhD from Cornell University in 1966 under Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson. He has been a professor at MIT Center for Theoretical Physics since 1969.

Jackiw is famous for the discovery of the so-called axial anomaly, also known as Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly, also known as the Chiral anomaly. In 1969, Roman Jackiw and John Stewart Bell published their explanation, which was later expanded and clarified by Stephen L. Adler, of the (observed) decay of a neutral pion into two photons. This decay is forbidden by a symmetry of classical electrodynamics, but Bell and Jackiw showed that this symmetry cannot be preserved at the quantum level. Their introduction of an "anomalous" term from quantum field theory required that the sum of the charges of the elementary fermions had to be zero. This work also gave important support to the color-theory of quarks.

External links

* [http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~sci_info/awards/Dirac/DiracMedallists/DiracMedal98.html Dirac Medal website's description of Jackiw's 1998 prize]
* [http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/11/12/8 Biography of John Bell, including description of his 1969 work with Jackiw]
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Persondata
NAME= Jackiw, Roman
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SHORT DESCRIPTION= Theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH=
PLACE OF BIRTH= Poland
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