Robert L. Jaffe

Morningstar Professor of Science, Post-Tenure at MIT

Bob is a theoretical physicist and educator, recently retired after a 50-year career at MIT.  His research on the quark substructure of matter forms the basis of ongoing experiments at particle accelerators throughout the world today.  Bob’s definitive textbook, The Physics of Energy, co-authored with Washington Taylor IV, addresses the existential crisis – providing affordable, abundant, and clean energy from renewable sources – facing humankind in the 21st century. 

The Physics of Energy explores energy sources and systems from deep within the atomic nucleus to the solar radiation that powers the wind and biological systems and has been stored over eons in fossil fuels.  Intended as a comprehensive text for an undergraduate or graduate course, the book can also be found on the desks of energy-industry professionals and policy makers who seek a deeper understanding of the scientific principles governing energy in the modern world.  The Physics of Energy won the 2019 PROSE Award of the Association of American Publishers as the best textbook in the physical sciences and mathematics of 2018.  

Bob entered research at the advent of the modern era in particle physics.  He and his MIT colleagues formulated the first consistent description of quark confinement known – in typical down-to-earth MIT fashion – as the “MIT Bag Model”.  This work began decades of exploration of how quarks and gluons bind together to form the protons and neutrons that account for 99.5% of the mass of everything we see around us.  Bob’s seminal theoretical works on many-quark systems and the spin substructure of protons launched research programs that remain vibrant today.  In another vein, he has investigated the nature of the quantum vacuum and with colleagues and students developed powerful methods to compute vacuum fluctuation mediated forces that pervade the microworld and confound the operation of micromachinery. 

Often putting the abstract world of theoretical physics aside, Bob has throughout his career devoted his energies to policy, education, and activism at the interface between physics and the broader society.    During the Vietnam War while a graduate student at Stanford he launched an action-oriented program known as the Stanford Workshops on Political and Social Issues (SWOPSI).  At MIT he started and nurtured an interdisciplinary seminar series known as Symposium@MIT that bridges the divides between MIT’s five schools.  Most recently he has worked with a new generation of scientists and engineers in Pakistan to found a modern school of science and engineering that now thrives at Pakistan’s premier private university, the Lahore University of Management Science.  In recognition of these efforts, Bob was recently awarded the Joseph A. Burton Award of the American Physical Society that recognizes “outstanding contributions to the public understanding `or resolution of issues at the interface between physics and society.”