Roy J. Glauber - Biography

Biography

Glauber was born in 1925 in New York City.

He was a member of the 1941 graduating class of the Bronx High School of Science, and went on to do his undergraduate work at Harvard University. After his sophomore year he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, where (at the age of 18) he was one of the youngest scientists at Los Alamos. His work involved calculating the critical mass for the atom bomb. After two years at Los Alamos, he returned to Harvard, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1946 and his PhD in 1949.

Glauber has received many honors for his research, including the Albert A. Michelson Medal from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (1985), the Max Born Award from the Optical Society of America (1985), the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society (1996), and the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. On 22 April 2008, Professor Glauber was awarded the 'Medalla de Oro del CSIC' ('CSIC's Gold Medal') in a ceremony held in Madrid, Spain.

Glauber is credited with the Glauber-Sudarshan P-representation, even though the Indian scientist George Sudarshan developed it first, with Glauber only adopting it later. Glauber coherent states (also called coherent states) are named after Glauber as well, though the quantum mechanical description of them was concurrently provided by Sudarshan as well.

He currently lives in Arlington, Massachusetts and is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University, where both past and present students enthusiastically praised his teaching to Harvard Crimson reporters. On April 15, 2010 police in Arlington caught a man they suspected of breaking into Glauber's home, he was later convicted of breaking and entering, but in the end it was only a replica of Glauber's Nobel Prize that was stolen.

Glauber has two children, a son and a daughter, and five grandchildren.