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Barry Barish
Leading LIGO through the development that enabled gravitational-wave detection.
MACRO · LIGO Scientific Collaboration
- Born
- 27 January 1936
- Birthplace
- Omaha, United States
More people
Barry Barish
Barry Barish is an American experimental physicist. He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne for contributions to LIGO and the observation of gravitational waves.
Early life
California upbringing
His family moved to Los Angeles after the Second World War.
Berkeley studies
Earned his physics degree and doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
- 1963 onward
Caltech
Joined the institution and worked on high-energy particle experiments.
- 1994–2005
LIGO leadership
Became principal investigator and later director, guiding the project’s construction and collaboration.
- 2018–2020s
Later academic work
Joined UC Riverside and later Stony Brook University.
Selected work
MACRO
Led work on the underground particle experiment in Italy.
LIGO Scientific Collaboration
Established the international research collaboration.
Nobel Prize in Physics
Shared the award following LIGO’s first gravitational-wave detection.
Beyond work
International collaboration
Worked on planning for the International Linear Collider.
National recognition
Received the United States National Medal of Science in 2023.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional source ↗Photo: R. Hahn. Public domain · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
