Politzer, Hugh David

Politzer, Hugh David (1949-…), an American physicist, won a share of the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for his research into the force that binds together particles in the nucleus of an atom. The prize was also awarded to the American physicists David J. Gross and Frank A. Wilczek. The three scientists studied the behavior of quarks, tiny particles that make up protons, neutrons, and various other particles. Quarks are attracted to one another by a force called the strong interaction, one of the four fundamental forces of physics. The strong interaction is sometimes called the strong force or strong nuclear force.

In 1973, Gross and Wilczek discovered that the strong interaction had a strange characteristic. Also in 1973, Politzer made the same discovery working independently. Two of the other fundamental forces, gravitation and the electromagnetic force, weaken between two particles as the particles move farther apart. The strong interaction, however, binds quarks more strongly the farther they are separated. The discovery of this characteristic, called asymptotic freedom, enabled the scientists to develop a theory that explained the strong interaction. The theory, which became known as quantum chromodynamics or QCD, describes how particles called gluons transmit the strong interaction between quarks. Gross and Wilczek published their discovery of QCD in 1973. Politzer published his discovery of QCD in 1974.

Politzer was born in New York City on Aug. 31, 1949. In 1974, he earned a Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He conducted research there until 1977, when he became a professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.