Roman Wladimir Jackiw (; ; November 8, 1939 â June 14, 2023) was an American theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist.
Born in Lubliniec, Poland in 1939 to a Ukrainian family, the family later moved to Austria and Germany before settling in New York City when Jackiw was about 10.
Jackiw earned his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and his PhD from Cornell University in 1966 under Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Theoretical Physics from 1969 until his retirement. He retained his affiliation in emeritus status in 2019.
After earning his PhD from Cornell University in 1966, Roman Jackiw held a junior fellowship at Harvard University from 1966 to 1969. In 1969, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, later progressing to associate and then full professor. He was subsequently named the Jerrold R. Zacharias Professor of Physics, a role he retained until retiring.
Jackiw became professor emeritus in 2013 and continued his research activities at MIT until his death on June 14, 2023. During his career, he also held visiting positions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a visiting professorship at Rockefeller University from 1977 to 1978.
Jackiw co-discovered the chiral anomaly, which is also known as the AdlerâÂÂBellâÂÂJackiw anomaly. In 1969, he and John Stewart Bell published their explanation, which was later expanded and clarified by Stephen L. Adler, of the observed decay of a neutral pion into two photons. A symmetry of classical electrodynamics forbids this decay, but Bell and Jackiw showed that this symmetry cannot be preserved at the quantum level. Their introduction of an "anomalous" term from quantum field theory required that the sum of the charges of the elementary fermions had to be zero. This work also gave important support to the colour theory of quarks.
Jackiw is also known for JackiwâÂÂTeitelboim gravity, often abbreviated as JT Gravity, a theory of gravity with one dimension each of space and time that includes a dilaton field. Sometimes known as the R = T model, it is used to model some aspects of near-extremal black holes.
Jackiw married fellow physicist So-Young Pi, daughter of Korean writer Pi Chun-deuk. One of Jackiw's sons is Stefan Jackiw, an American violinist. The other is Nicholas Jackiw, a software designer known for inventing The Geometer's Sketchpad. His daughter, Simone Ahlborn, is an educator at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jackiw died 14 June 2023, at the age of 83.