Nationality American Died February 28, 2011 Role Physicist | Name Bruce Winstein Alma mater CalTech | |
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Born September 25, 1943
Los Angeles ( 1943-09-25 ) Fields Experimental physics and cosmology Institutions Princeton, University of Chicago, Fermilab Notable awards W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics Education California Institute of Technology (1970), University of California, Los Angeles Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
Bruce Winstein (25 September 1943, Los Angeles – 28 February 2011) was an experimental physicist and cosmologist noted for his early work in elementary particle physics, particularly work toward demonstrating a serious asymmetry between particles and their anti-particles (CP violation). Later in his career, he worked in experimental cosmology, measuring polarization in the microwave background radiation whose properties date back to the early universe.
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Career
After a distinguished early career in experimental elementary particle physics, Winstein spent a year in Princeton as a Guggenheim Fellow, studying astrophysics in general and the microwave background radiation in particular. He then returned to his position as the Samuel K. Alison Distinguished Service Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago, where he founded its NSF Physics Frontier Center for Cosmological Physics.
In 1999, he was leader of Fermilab's KTeV experiment, which produced the first definitive evidence for direct CP violation, an important proof that matter and anti-matter are not perfect twins. He was also leader of the QUIET experiment, a multi-year international collaboration that sought to detect gravity waves in the early universe by measuring polarization in the microwave background radiation.
He received his B.S. degree in Physics and Math from UCLA and his Ph.D. in 1970 from Caltech.
Winstein was inducted into the National Academy of Science in 1995 and into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. Also in 2007, he was awarded the W.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics by the American Physical Society.
Honors
Winstein was a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, the American Physical Society awarded him its W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics, with the following citation: "For leadership in the series of experiments that resulted in a multitude of precision measurements of properties of neutral K mesons, most notably the discovery of direct CP violation."