Sam Treiman

Sam Bard Treiman (; May 27, 1925 – November 30, 1999) was an American theoretical physicist who produced research in the fields of cosmic rays, quantum physics, plasma physics, and gravity physics. He made contributions to the understanding of the weak interaction and he and his students are credited with developing the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. Sam had a brother, Oscar, who was six years older. Sam was educated in the Chicago public school system and, after graduating high school in 1942, he entered Northwestern University, electing to study chemical engineering. His doctoral thesis dealt with the physics of cosmic rays, and the work was done under the supervision of John Alexander Simpson. While at the university, Treiman met his wife, Joan Little, an educational psychologist. They had three children, including Rebecca.

Treiman began teaching at Princeton in 1952 as an instructor.

A feature of Treiman's work was his ability to devise simple, unambiguous experimental tests for theoretical predictions and phenomena. In addition to his own work, Treiman was widely recognized as a teacher and mentor, supervising more than two dozen graduate students over three decades. His Socratic teaching style enabled his students to gain valuable insights without having been spoon fed the results. He was known for his general wisdom as well as his expertise. One of his more paradoxical sayings is known as Treiman's theorem: "Impossible things usually don't happen."

He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1963, and a member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences in 1972. Treiman was awarded the Oersted medal by the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1995. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Treiman died of leukemia at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on November 30, 1999. 1958 (with Marvin Goldberger) dispersion relations analysis of pion and nucleon beta decay, culminating in the Goldberger-Treiman relationship for the charged pion decay amplitude. This work eventually led to the hypothesis of the partially conserved axial vector current, known as PCAC and to a deeper understanding of spontaneously broken chiral symmetry of the strong interaction. 1962 (with C.N. Yang) Treiman-Yang angle test for single pion exchange dominance 1966 (with Curtis Callan) derivation of the Callan–Treiman relations for K meson decay. 1971 (with David Gross) scaling in vector gluon exchange theories, coining the term twist for the difference between the dimension and spin of an operator. 1972 (with Abraham Pais) deriving the implications of weak neutral currents for inclusive neutrino reactions.

Publications Sam Treiman's publication records in SPIRES

Photonics: Managing Competitiveness in the Information Era, Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Applications, Vice Chairman S. Treiman, Board on Physics and Astronomy, National Academy of Sciences (1988)