Glauber was born in 1925 in New York City the son of Felicia (Fox) and Emanuel B. Glauber.[10] He was a member of the 1941 graduating class of the Bronx High School of Science, the first graduating class from that school. He then went on to do his undergraduate work at Harvard University. After his sophomore year he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, where (at the age of 18) he was one of the youngest scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His work involved calculating the critical mass for the atom bomb. After two years at Los Alamos, he returned to Harvard, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1946 and his PhD in 1949.[11]
Research
Glauber's recent research dealt with problems in a number of areas of quantum optics, a field which, broadly speaking, studies the quantum electrodynamical interactions of light and matter. He also continued work on several topics in high-energy collision theory, including the analysis of hadron collisions, and the statistical correlation of particles produced in high-energy reactions.[citation needed]
Specific topics of his research included: the quantum mechanical behavior of trapped wave packets; interactions of light with trapped ions; atom counting-the statistical properties of free atom beams and their measurement; algebraic methods for dealing with fermion statistics; coherence and correlations of bosonic atoms near the Bose–Einstein condensation; the theory of continuously monitored photon counting-and its reaction on quantum sources; the fundamental nature of "quantum jumps"; resonant transport of particles produced multiply in high-energy collisions; the multiple diffraction model of proton-proton and proton-antiproton scattering.[citation needed]
After Glauber was selected for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005, a University of Texas at Austin Physics Professor, George Sudarshan, claimed that he had been overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee for the award, having published some of the earliest papers on quantum optics. Glauber, a theorist, was awarded half the prize, along with physics experimenters John Hall and Theodor Hänsch, recognized for their work on precision spectroscopy.[14][15][16]
Ig Nobel
For many years before winning his Nobel Prize, Glauber took part in the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies, where he appeared each year as "Keeper of the Broom," sweeping the stage clean of the paper airplanes that have traditionally been thrown during the event. He missed the 2005 event as he was being awarded his real Nobel Prize for Physics.[17][18]