Sheldon Lee Glashow Biography

Sheldon Lee Glashow is an American theoretical physicist who received a share of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics for his contribution to developing the electroweak theory, which explains the unity of electromagnetism and the weak force. Along with his high profile academic career as the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University, he is also a member of the Board of Sponsors for the ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.’ The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, he was born in New York City and raised in a middle-class home. Both of his parents, who themselves had been unable to get a good education, were adamant that their children should receive university education. He was bright and scientifically inclined from a young age and attended the Bronx High School of Science where he became friends with future scientists Gary Feinberg and Steven Weinberg. There was no doubt in his mind that one day he would grow up to be a scientist. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University, he ventured into an academic career and spent several years in the Harvard physics department in diverse posts. It was in the 1960s that he began his work on electroweak unification models, which ultimately won him the Nobel Prize.