Jim Peebles

Jim Peebles in 2019

Phillip James Edwin Peebles (born April 25, 1935) is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. Peebles was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology. He shared the prize with Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star.

Quotes

• The n-point correlation functions have proved useful not only as descriptive statistics but also as dynamic variables in the Newtonian theory of the evolution of clustering. ... The functions are generalized to mass correlation functions in position and momentum, and the BBGKY hierarchy of equations for their evolution is derived. This yields a new way to analyze the evolution of mass clustering in an expanding universe.
  • The Large-scale Structure of the Universe. Princeton Universe Press. 1980. p. xii. 

• A solid stores energy in the vibrations of the atoms about their equilibrium positions. In the simplest approximation, which Einstein considered, each atom vibrates with the same frequency, ν, in each of three dimensions, so a solid containing N atoms can be thought of as 3N one-dimensional simple harmonic oscillators.
  • Quantum Mechanics. Princeton University Press. 1992. p. 11. 

• Another somewhat confusing usage is the name "the big bang" for the standard model. It is not appropriate, because it connotes a spatially isolated event, an explosion, that marked the start of everything. ... But the name has a very evident appeal and I expect that people will continue to use it.
  • Principles of Physical Cosmology. Princeton University Press. 1993. p. xvii. 

• I have been working in cosmology for 55 years ... I'm the last man standing, so to speak, from those early days.
  • as quoted by Kenneth Chang and Megan Specia in: (8 October 2019)"Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Studies of Earth's Place in the Universe". NY Times.

• I don't think there is a final theory of anything. It's theories all the way down.
  • Princeton news conference for James Peeble, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics (October 8, 2019). (quote at 25:26 of 38:15)

• Don't pay too much attention to that Nobel Prize. They have to be capricious — they have to be. And that means that people fully deserving the award don't get it.
  • (November 20, 2024)"P. J. E. Peebles, "The Whole Truth: A Cosmologist's Reflections on the Search for Objective Reality"". Harvard Science Book Talks and Research Lectures, YouTube. (quote at 26:06 of 58:06)