Hugh David Politzer
American physicist · United States · Scientists · Born 1949 · age 77
Hugh David Politzer is read about 41 times a day, in 65 languages.
Counted to 16 September 2026, not since.
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 361 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He cracked a paradox at the heart of matter: why quarks cling tighter the farther apart you pull them. That 1973 insight - asymptotic freedom - explained how the strong force actually works and earned him a third of the 2004 Nobel in Physics.
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About this person
Born August 31, 1949, Politzer made his career-defining discovery while still a graduate student, working on the quantum field theory governing quarks and gluons. The finding - shared with David Gross and Frank Wilczek - revealed that the strong nuclear force weakens at short distances, the opposite of everyday intuition, a property called asymptotic freedom. The Nobel committee recognized the trio in 2004. Politzer landed at the California Institute of Technology, where he holds the Richard Chace Tolman chair in theoretical physics.
In common with Hugh
Sheldon Lee GlashowBoth received High Energy and Particle Physics Prize
Leonard SusskindBoth received Sakurai Prize
Nima Arkani-HamedBoth received Sakurai Prize
Robert BroutBoth received High Energy and Particle Physics Prize
Toshihide MaskawaBoth received Sakurai Prize
Giorgio ParisiBoth received High Energy and Particle Physics PrizeFame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.