Lincoln Wolfenstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lincoln Wolfenstein (b. 1923) is an American particle physicist who studies the weak interaction. Wolfenstein was born in 1923 and obtained his PhD in 1949 from the University of Chicago.^[1] He retired from Carnegie Mellon University in 2000 after being a faculty member for 52 years, but still lectures there occasionally. Despite being retired, he seems to continue to come into work nearly every day to the amusement of the rest of the faculty.

Wolfenstein is a particle phenomenologist, a theorist who focuses primarily on connecting theoretical physics to experimental observations. In 1978 he noted that the presence of electrons in Earth and Solar matter could affect neutrino propagation. This work led to an eventual understanding of the MSW effect, which acts to enhance neutrino oscillation in matter. Wolfenstein received the 2005 Bruno Pontecorvo Prize from The Scientific Council of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR, for his pioneering work on the MSW effect.