Robert Finkelstein

Robert Jay Finkelstein (1916–2020) was an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions to elementary particle physics. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. under John Van Vleck. After graduation, he worked on shockwaves and detonation theory at the Navy Department, collaborating with George Gamow and solving a problem previously addressed numerically by Chandrasekhar.

Finkelstein was introduced to Albert Einstein by John von Neumann while working as a liaison. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of Chicago and the Institute for Advanced Study under Robert Oppenheimer before joining UCLA's high energy theory group in 1948, where he remained until his retirement in 1986. His research included significant work on beta decay, pi-meson parity, radiative corrections to muon decay, soliton solutions in gauge theories, and contributions to general relativity and supergravity.

Later in his career, Finkelstein explored particle models using q-deformations and knot theory. He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1959–60) and held sabbaticals at the Institute for Advanced Study. His students included notable physicists like David Hestenes. Married in 1956, he passed away in Los Angeles at age 104.