Joseph Weber (May 17, 1919 – September 30, 2000) was an American physicist. He developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars) and first suggested the use of laser interferometry in the field. Weber did his undergraduate work at the US Naval Academy, and served aboard US Navy ships during WWII, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. A memorable experience was his service on the "Lady Lex" USS Lexington (CV-2). In the Battle of the Coral Sea his carrier sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō and was in turn fatally damaged. He often regaled his students with the story of how the Lexington glowed incandescent as she slipped beneath the waves. After the war, he was put in charge of electronic countermeasures for the Navy, before being hired by the engineering faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park in 1948. A condition of his appointment at Maryland was that he complete a PhD, and he received his PhD from The Catholic University of America in 1951. With the publication of his theories linking general relativity to the existence of gravitational waves in 1961, he moved from the Engineering Department to the physics department at Maryland. His first marriage, to his high school classmate Anita Straus, ended with her death in 1971. His second marriage was to astronomer Virginia Trimble. He had 4 sons (from his first marriage). The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation was named in his honor.
References
- Yodh and Wallis (2001). "Obituaries: Joseph Weber". Physics Today 54 (7).
- Faces and Places: Joe Weber 1919-2000. CERN Courier. Retrieved on 2006-02-26. (Obituary)
