Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, renowned for unifying electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force through electroweak theory, an achievement recognized by the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University and held faculty appointments at Berkeley and Harvard before spending much of his career at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Jack S. Josey-Welch Professor. At UT, he made transformative contributions to cosmology, quantum field theory, and early universe physics. His textbook The Quantum Theory of Fields shaped a generation of physicists.
Weinberg was also a prolific science writer and public intellectual. His books, including The First Three Minutes, Dreams of a Final Theory, and Facing Up, brought complex physics and science policy to broad audiences.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and several foreign academies, he received numerous honors including the National Medal of Science. Learn more.