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| − | '''Robert Henry Dicke''' (1916-1997) was one of the most accomplished American-born [[physicist]]s and experimental physicists in history. He made significant contributions to [[radar]], atomic physics, [[cosmology]], quantum optics, gravity physics, and astrophysics. | + | '''Robert Henry Dicke''' (1916-1997) was one of the most accomplished American-born [[physicist]]s and experimental physicists in history. He made significant contributions to [[radar]], atomic physics, [[cosmology]], quantum optics, gravity physics, and astrophysics. Like the great British physicist [[Fred Hoyle]], Dicke paid a heavy price for criticizing a theory favored by [[liberals]] (the [[Theory of Relativity]]): Dicke was denied a Nobel Prize despite being the greatest American physicist ever. |
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| − | Dicke never won a Nobel prize, though many people considered his work to be Nobel-worthy. Belief that the Nobel committee has acted improperly happens from time to time; perhaps the best-known instances of this are Dicke, [[Fred Hoyle]], Lise Meitner, and Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. (Rosalind Franklin was another case steeped in possible politics, though she died before the appropriate prize was awarded, and Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously. But there were other honors that she was denied, unfairly in many people's opinion.) In Robert Dicke's case, it could be argued that his gravity theory turned out to be incorrect. The same could be said for Fred Hoyle's "steady state" hypothesis. But both scientists made other Nobel-worthy contributions, and there are those who say that a single wrong turn should not be an impediment to winning a Nobel.
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| | A tribute by his colleagues, Princeton Professors W. Happer, P. J. E. Peebles, and D. T. Wilkinson, summed up Professor Dicke's career as follows:<ref>http://bob.nap.edu/html/biomems/rdicke.html (emphasis added).</ref> | | A tribute by his colleagues, Princeton Professors W. Happer, P. J. E. Peebles, and D. T. Wilkinson, summed up Professor Dicke's career as follows:<ref>http://bob.nap.edu/html/biomems/rdicke.html (emphasis added).</ref> |
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| | ==The Brans-Dicke Theory of Gravitation== | | ==The Brans-Dicke Theory of Gravitation== |
| − | While Dicke accepted [[Theory of Relativity|Relativity]], both special and general, he believed that plain General Relativity did not fully explain gravity. Along with his former student Carl Brans, he formulated the Brans-Dicke theory, which includes a scalar field in addition to the tensor field defined by general relativity. This "scalar-tensor theory" (as opposed to plain relativity, which is just a "tensor theory") included a scalar field, usually denoted ω, which, when assigned a certain value, they believed matched experimental data better. (When ω is set to infinity, the Brans-Dicke theory becomes equivalent to plain General Relativity.) Brans and Dicke suggested a value of about 5. The observable differences between Brans-Dicke and general relativity are extremely tiny, but the Mariner and Cassini spacecraft (below) could detect this. | + | While Dicke accepted [[Theory of Relativity|Relativity]], both special and general, he believed that plain General Relativity did not fully explain gravity. Along with his former student Carl Brans, he formulated the Brans-Dicke theory, which includes a scalar field in addition to the tensor field defined by general relativity. This "scalar-tensor theory" (as opposed to plain relativity, which is just a "tensor theory") included a scalar field, usually denoted ω, which, when assigned a certain value, they believed matched experimental data better. (When ω is set to infinity, the Brans-Dicke theory becomes equivalent to plain General Relativity.) Brans and Dicke suggested a value of about 5. The observable differences between Brans-Dicke and general relativity are extremely tiny. |
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| | Dicke was instrumental in proposing extremely sensitive tests of General Relativity. Modern measurements of the various tests, specifically from Mariner 6 spacecraft in 1969, and the Cassini spacecraft in 2004, show that plain Einsteinian relativity, not the Brans-Dicke theory, agrees with observation.<ref>http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943324,00.html</ref> <ref>http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/70s/release_1970_0566.html</ref> <ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZuP9JQzc00C&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&source=bl&ots=Y2jhf2OjcU&sig=C8qWD1E5ukCe_5DiKObCiWjAEKg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cCw9VcfBE8HksASynoHICw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&f=false The Rise and Fall of the Brans-Dicke Theory]</ref> Nevertheless, interest in the Brans-Dicke formulation has recently revived, in the context of dark matter / dark energy investigations. | | Dicke was instrumental in proposing extremely sensitive tests of General Relativity. Modern measurements of the various tests, specifically from Mariner 6 spacecraft in 1969, and the Cassini spacecraft in 2004, show that plain Einsteinian relativity, not the Brans-Dicke theory, agrees with observation.<ref>http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943324,00.html</ref> <ref>http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/70s/release_1970_0566.html</ref> <ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZuP9JQzc00C&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&source=bl&ots=Y2jhf2OjcU&sig=C8qWD1E5ukCe_5DiKObCiWjAEKg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cCw9VcfBE8HksASynoHICw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&f=false The Rise and Fall of the Brans-Dicke Theory]</ref> Nevertheless, interest in the Brans-Dicke formulation has recently revived, in the context of dark matter / dark energy investigations. |