Harald Fritzsch

Harald Fritzsch
Born	(1943-02-10) February 10, 1943 Zwickau, Germany
Fields	Physics
Institutions	CERN California Institute of Technology University of Wuppertal University of Bern Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Doctoral students	Marcus Hutter[1] Dieter Lüst[1]
Notable awards	Dirac Medal (2008)

Harald Fritsch (born 10 February 1943 in Zwickau, Germany) is a German theoretical physicist known for his contributions to the theory of quarks, the development of Quantum Chromodynamics and the great unification of the standard model of particle physics.

Education and career

After his completing his Abitur in Zwickau 1961, he became Soldier of the Nationale Volksarmee of the GDR. He studied Physics in Leipzig from 1963 to 1968. After fleeing to West Germany, he continued his studies in Munich where he worked together with Werner Heisenberg and finished his Ph.D. under supervision of Heinrich Mitter.

He spent a year at CERN where he started working together with Murray Gell-Mann. Together, they moved to the California Institute of Technology where in 1971 they introduced the concept of colour charge quantum number which allowed them in collaboration with William A. Bardeen to explain the decay rate of pions. One year later, Gell-Mann and Fritzsch proposed a gauge theory for the strong interaction which nowadays is called Quantumchromodynamics. In 1975 Fritzsch published a paper together with Peter Minkowski^[2] in which they firstly proposed the symmetry group SO(10) as the symmetry of the grand unified theory which has become a standard theory.

Fritzsch work further includes contributions to "composite models" of leptons and quarks, mass matrices of quarks and leptons, weak decays of heavy quark d, cosmology and the fundamental constants of physics.

After working for one year at the University of Wuppertal and the University of Bern, he became professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1980. He retired in 2008.

Works

• Quarks: The Stuff of Matter (1989, ISBN 978-0465067848)^[3][4]
• The Creation of Matter: The Universe from Beginning to End (1984, ISBN 978-0465014460)^[5]
• An Equation That Changed the World: Newton, Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity (1997, ISBN 0226265587)
• The Curvature of Spacetime: Newton, Einstein, and Gravitation (2005, ISBN 978-0231118217)
• Elementary Particles: Building Blocks of Matter (2005, ISBN 978-9812564085)
• Escape From Leipzig (2008, ISBN 978-9812793065)
• The Fundamental Constants: A Mystery of Physics (2009, ISBN 978-9812834324 (paperback))
• You Are Wrong, Mr Einstein!: Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg and Feynman Discussing Quantum Mechanics (2011, ISBN 978-9814324991)
• Microcosmos: The World of Elementary Particles: Fictional Discussions between Einstein, Newton, and Gell-Mann (2013, ISBN 978-9814449984)
• 50 Years of Quarks (with Murray Gell-Mann, 2015, ISBN 978-9814618106)

References