Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

440 results found

supersymmetry

(Encyclopedia)supersymmetry, in physics, theory concerning the relationship of the elementary particles called boson to those known as fermions, and vice versa, and linking the four fundamental forces. In supersymm...

Friedman, Jerome Isaac

(Encyclopedia)Friedman, Jerome Isaac frēdˈmən [key], 1930–, American physicist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1956. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Friedman won the 1990 Nobel P...

Taylor, Richard Edward

(Encyclopedia)Taylor, Richard Edward, 1930–2018, Canadian experimental physicist. He was associated primarily with Stanford, where he received his doctorate (1962) and helped build and then worked—first (1962) ...

Veltman, Martinus Justinus Godefriedus

(Encyclopedia)Veltman, Martinus Justinus Godefriedus, 1931–2021, Dutch physicist (Univ. of Utrecht, Ph.D., 1963). Veltman was a professo...

fermion

(Encyclopedia)fermion fûrˈmēŏnˌ [key]: see elementary particles; exclusion principle; Fermi-Dirac statistics. ...

tachyon

(Encyclopedia)tachyon tăkˈēŏnˌ [key], hypothetical elementary particle that travels only at speeds exceeding that of light. According to the theory of relativity, the speed of light is the limiting velocity fo...

exclusion principle

(Encyclopedia)exclusion principle, physical principle enunciated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 stating that no two electrons in an atom can occupy the same energy state simultaneously. The energy states, or levels, in ...

string theory

(Encyclopedia)string theory, description of elementary particles based on one-dimensional curves, or “strings,” instead of point particles. Superstring theory, which is string theory that contains a kind of sym...

quantum electrodynamics

(Encyclopedia)quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum field theory that describes the properties of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with electrically charged matter in the framework of quantum theory. ...

baryon

(Encyclopedia)baryon bârˈēŏnˌ [key] [Gr.,=heavy], class of elementary particles that includes the proton, the neutron, and a large number of unstable, heavier particles, known as hyperons. From a technical poi...