Rainer Weiss is a research pioneer in the field of cosmic background radiation and a co-founder of the LIGO Project. He led the way in the measurements of the spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation and later co-founded the NASA COBE satellite project. He also invented the interferometric gravitational wave detector used in the LIGO project.

Among his other major research areas have been experimental atomic physics, atomic clocks, laser physics, experimental gravitation, and millimeter and sub-millimeter astronomy. Dr. Weiss, who was awarded the American Physical Society’s Einstein Prize in 2007 and the 2006 Gruber Cosmology Prize as part of the COBE Team, is professor of physics, emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.