George Zweig 1051279 218142942 2008-06-09T10:16:01Z 78.86.9.206 '''George Zweig''' (born 1937 in Moscow, Russia into a Jewish family) was originally trained as a [[particle physicist]] under [[Richard Feynman]] and later turned his attention to [[neurobiology]]. He spent a number of years as a Research Scientist at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]] and [[MIT]], but as of 2004, has gone on to work in the financial services industry. A [[1959]] graduate of the [[University of Michigan]], Zweig proposed the existence of [[quark]]s while a graduate student in [[Physics]] at the [[California Institute of Technology]] in [[1964]] (independently of [[Murray Gell-Mann]]). Zweig referred to them as "aces" after the four playing cards, because he speculated there were four of them. Like Gell-Mann, he realized that the properties of particles such as [[protons]] and [[neutrons]] could be explained by treating them as triplets of other particles (which he called aces and Gell-Mann called quarks), but, unlike Gell-Mann, he was inclined to accept these entities as physically real particles<ref>CERN Preprint, number 8182/TH401 (1964) 24p.</ref>. As pointed out by astrophysicist [[John Gribbin]], Gell-Mann deservedly received the [[Nobel Prize]] for physics in 1969, for his overall contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions; at that time, quark theory had not become fully accepted, and was not specifically mentioned. In later years, when quark theory became established as the standard model of [[particle physics]], the Nobel Committee presumably felt they couldn't recognize Zweig as the scientist who first spelled out the theory's implications in detail and suggested that they might be real, without including Gell-Mann again. Whatever the reason, despite Zweig's seminal contributions to a theory central to modern physics, he has not been awarded a Nobel Prize<ref>Gribbin, John (1995) <i>Schr&ouml;dinger's Kittens and the Search For Reality.<i> ISBN 0-316-32838-3 193-4</ref>. Zweig later turned to neurobiology, and studied the [[transduction (physiology)|transduction]] of [[sound]] into [[nerve]] impulses in the [[cochlea]] of the [[human]] [[ear]]. In [[1975]], while studying the ear, he discovered the [[continuous wavelet transform]]. In [[1981]], Zweig received a [[MacArthur Prize Fellowship]]. In [[1996]], Zweig was elected to the [[United States National Academy of Sciences|National Academy of Sciences]]. Zweig now works for [[Renaissance Technologies]] on Long Island, NY. ==References== {{reflist}} {{US-scientist-stub}} {{physicist-stub}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Zweig, George}} [[Category:1937 births]] [[Category:MacArthur Fellows]] [[Category:American physicists]] [[Category:American neuroscientists]] [[Category:Neurobiologists]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:Particle physicists]] [[Category:Jewish American scientists]] [[de:George Zweig]] [[et:George Zweig]] [[pl:George Zweig]] [[ja:ジョージ・ツワイク]] [[ru:Цвейг, Джордж]] [[sl:George Zweig]]