Rainer Weiss wins Kavli Prize in Astrophysics
Rainier Weiss, emeritus professor of physics, is a recipient of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. The Kavli Prizes are awarded biennially to recognize scientists who have made seminal advances in three categories: astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. Weiss will share the prize, including a cash award of $1 million, with Ronald Drever, emeritus professor of physics at Caltech, and Kip Thorne, Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus. The three scientists, who are co-founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), have received the prize for the direct detection of gravitational waves, according to the award citation: “This detection has, in a single stroke and for the first time, validated Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity for very strong fields, established the nature of gravitational waves, demonstrated the existence of black holes with masses 30 times that of our sun, and opened a new window on the universe.” On September 14, 2015,...