Abraham Pais - Career in Particle Physics

Career in Particle Physics

During World War II, Pais's doctoral dissertation had attracted the attention of Niels Bohr, who invited him to come to Denmark as his assistant. Pais was forced into hiding before he could leave the Netherlands. In 1946, following the war, Pais was able to accept that invitation and served as a personal assistant to Bohr at his country home in Tisvilde for a year.

In 1947 he accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States and thus became a colleague of Albert Einstein.

For the next 25 years he worked on elementary particle theory with a primary interest in quantum field theory and symmetry. The technical contributions for which he is recognized include a precise definition of G-parity with Res Jost, and his treatment of SU(6) symmetry breaking.

He is primarily associated with two concepts that directly contributed to major breakthroughs in his field. The first was the idea of "associated production" to explain the puzzling properties of strange particles. His ideas and those of Murray Gell-Mann resulted in the idea of a quantum number called strangeness. The second concept was Pais's and Gell-Mann's theory regarding the composition of the long-lived neutral kaon (K_L), which challenged the classical notion of a particle, but was later proven essentially correct.

In 1956, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In 1963 Pais accepted a position at Rockefeller University to head the theoretical physics group while Rockefeller was in transition from being a medical institute to a university. He finished his career there as the Detlev W. Bronk professor emeritus.