![\"Leonard](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/08\/Parker.jpg\")
A short walk down the hall from Brady\u2019s office is one reserved for physicist Leonard Parker. A 51ÁÔÆæ emeritus professor, Parker has spent his career devising theories relating to the expanding universe. His trailblazing theory of the creation of particles \u2013 or mass \u2013 in the universe inspired thousands of published papers by physicists around the globe and put him on par with some of the biggest names in the field.<\/p>\n
Dressed in a tweed sport jacket, Parker is modest and soft-spoken. He speaks humbly and sparingly about his professional achievements, focusing instead on the work of his mentors and peers, while extolling the prominence of 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s physics department.<\/p>\n
Still, it is his name that graces the Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, a research center that has grown in size and stature since Parker was named its founding director in 1997.<\/p>\n
At one point, Parker\u2019s theories paralleled Stephen Hawking\u2019s black hole theories. \u201cHis work set the scene for Hawking\u2019s discovery that black holes do create particles,\u201d says Brady, whom Parker promoted in 2007 to head the center. \u201cThat field \u2013 Leonard was the founder of it \u2013 was just a burgeoning field through the \u201970s and into the \u201980s, and of course has had a profound impact on our understanding of the universe and of black holes in recent times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many physicists, Parker contemplated the existence of gravitational waves decades before they were detected. And in some ways, his work was a steppingstone for the development of LIGO.<\/p>\n
Parker retired in 2008, or \u201csupposedly retired,\u201d as he says. He worked with doctoral students for a few more years, and he still logs onto his computer from his home office these days. Sometimes, he walks to campus to join staff and students in colloquia and seminars. His KIRC workspace features thick texts stacked on bookshelves and the floor. One shelf holds his doctoral thesis, \u201cThe Creation of Particles in an Expanding Universe,\u201d 360 pages of mathematical genius that caught the eye of the physics community when it was published.<\/p>\n
That was 1966. Parker has been on a theoretical quest of the cosmos ever since.<\/p>\n
He was born in Brooklyn in 1938. As a boy, he had a keen awareness of the role science played in World War II. \u201cBy the time the war ended in 1945, I had heard about nuclear fission and things like that,\u201d he says. He was drawn to science early, conducting chemistry experiments in his parents\u2019 basement, studying fruit flies in school. To gaze at the stars, he built a 3-inch reflecting telescope.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 12, I decided I wanted to be a physicist,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Neither of his parents graduated from high school. \u201cThey had to go to work,\u201d he says. His father continued in the family\u2019s traditional profession by running a dress-manufacturing business in New York\u2019s garment district. Parker\u2019s paternal grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, had also worked in textiles. Meanwhile, his mother\u2019s parents \u2013 Jewish immigrants from what is now the Ukraine \u2013 opened a grocery store in Brooklyn. Parker\u2019s family eventually bought a house in Jamaica Estates, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Queens.<\/p>\n
Accepted into the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, Parker excelled. He was also a member of the Manhattan Chess Club, where he often played against \u2013 and lost to \u2013 a 12-year-old Bobby Fischer, who\u2019d become history\u2019s 11th world chess champion. Graduating high school in 1956, Parker enrolled at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. There, he met his wife, Gloria, who was studying elementary education. They married in 1961.<\/p>\n
Since early in high school, Parker had been reading Einstein. \u201cThere were these statements you would always hear about relativity of time and blah blah blah,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I tried to actually understand that. My next-door neighbor was the editor at Philosophical Library, which published books on Einstein. He would give me some of those books to read. I remember I was very excited about it all.\u201d The neighbor had even planned to introduce Parker to Einstein, but Einstein died in 1955 before a meeting could be arranged.<\/p>\n
Parker graduated from Rochester summa cum laude and was accepted into a graduate program at Harvard University. Suddenly, he was breathing the same air as many of the world\u2019s eminent physicists, some of whom would win the Nobel Prize \u2013 Julian Schwinger in 1965, Sheldon Glashow in 1979 and Roy Glauber in 2005.<\/p>\n
Parker studied Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity as an undergrad, and it flowed into completing his doctorate. His challenge was to work at \u201cthe interface\u201d of general relativity \u2013 the theory that gravity is in the space-time continuum that\u2019s created by the presence of mass \u2013 and quantum field theory, which relates to the collection, or field, of subatomic particles and how they form and disappear.<\/p>\n
Gloria worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, analyzing satellite orbits, while the couple lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, they had their first child, David, who\u2019s now an engineer. After completing his thesis, Parker was asked to teach quantum mechanics for a year at the University of North Carolina, and the family moved to Chapel Hill. Their second child was born, Michael, today a doctor.<\/p>\n
With his doctorate complete and his stint at UNC over, Parker began searching for a job. \u201cI had a rude awakening when I realized I had to look for a position,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI was very happy to be teaching. I didn\u2019t realize that you had to worry about making a living. What a trivial thing, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a hard time for physics departments around the country. Government funding was in short supply, and teaching positions were highly coveted. But in 1968, with his thesis published and receiving outstanding reviews, Parker accepted a position at 51ÁÔÆæ as an assistant professor, teaching and working on quantum field theory.<\/p>\n
The post was a good fit. With his groundbreaking work, he had made a name for himself. Graduate students and postdocs applied to work with him in the physics department and hear him lecture. Editors of scientific journals asked him to edit scholarly papers.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he and his wife grew comfortable in Milwaukee. \u201cI felt it was right locating in Milwaukee for my children. I felt the most important thing was to bring up your children,\u201d Parker says. \u201cI\u2019m not overwhelmed by people who are successful and not spending time with families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their third child, Debbie, now an occupational therapist, was born in Milwaukee, and when the children were in high school, Gloria became a certified diabetes educator and dietician. She\u2019d eventually take a position at the Diabetes Treatment Center at Columbia St. Mary\u2019s Hospital, where she works today. The Parkers have four grandchildren.<\/p>\n
A few years after moving to Milwaukee, Parker was asked to spend a year in the physics department at Princeton University, teaching, supervising thesis students and studying under John Wheeler, the theorist who\u2019s credited with coining the term \u201cblack hole.\u201d Parker\u2019s stint as visiting professor came on the heels of his first National Science Foundation grant, which would be renewed annually for 40 years at 51ÁÔÆæ. It also placed him in the city where Einstein lived for much of his life.<\/p>\n
At Princeton, he was invited to join the esteemed Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein\u2019s academic home. \u201cI looked through the paperwork,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI thought I must be a visiting fellow or something. It was only later that I realized I was a member.\u201d<\/p>\n
While at Princeton, he\u2019d wanted to apply his theory of the creation of particles to the formation of a black hole as matter collapses into it. Other pressing assignments and teaching duties pulled him away from the idea, however, and he didn\u2019t get to the point of publishing his proof. \u201cI was a pretty diffident guy,\u201d he says. \u201cI never wanted to really push my stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
He eventually published the paper in 1975. But by then, Hawking had solved the proof, showing how particles are emitted as a black hole is formed, generating radiation. Hawking submitted a paper for publication just three weeks before Parker\u2019s submission was received. Parker had been scooped.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turned out I was not as productive as I should have been,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the problem that Hawking solved, in a beautiful way, using a different method.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he remained at the top of his game as an internationally renowned physicist throughout his career.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Milwaukee philanthropists Alfred and Isabel Bader made a generous donation to 51ÁÔÆæ in Parker\u2019s name. Alfred Bader, a Harvard grad and chemist who founded Aldrich Chemical Co. in Milwaukee, had been a good friend of Parker\u2019s since the late 1960s. And as a condition of the $1.6 million gift, he and his wife asked the university to rename the physics center the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology
\nand Astrophysics.<\/p>\n
Humbled yet hesitant, Parker tried to talk them out of it. \u201cI thought it should have been named after Alfred,\u201d Parker says, \u201cbut he insisted that it be named after me.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n From behind his desk, with a laptop, desktop computer and cell phone within easy reach, Patrick Brady spins entertaining narratives as he explains the complexities of gravitational physics. Speaking in a patient and at times lyrical manner, his Irish origin Brady, 50, grew up in Dublin. His father was a sheet-metal worker who toiled on automobiles, and his mother was a homemaker. \u201cMy dad was a very talented man with his hands, incredibly good at solving problems that required manual labor. I learned a lot,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople sometimes make fun of me in the LIGO collaborative because they think of me as a theorist who doesn\u2019t know how to do any experimental things.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, you know,\u201d and he smiles as he sets up the punch line, \u201cI know how to change the clutch in a Mini Cooper in four hours. You can\u2019t tell me that I don\u2019t know how to use my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n He was the first in his extended family to attend university, and both of his parents stressed the importance of higher education. \u201cDad would always say, \u2018Education is no load to carry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n After Brady completed a degree in mathematical science at University College in Dublin, a professor\u2019s recommendation led him to a three-year stint at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, to study with Werner Israel, a leading black hole theoretician.<\/p>\n His interest in gravitational physics had started earlier, when he became fascinated with black holes in the 1970s. \u201cI was a young kid at the time,\u201d he says, noting he was born a year after a famous mathematical result was published by English physicist Roger Penrose. \u201cHe wrote a very short two pages in which he essentially convinced the world that objects must collapse down to form black holes.\u201d<\/p>\n A renaissance in black hole theory was underway, led by the likes of Wheeler, Penrose, Israel, Hawking, Parker and Kip Thorne, one of LIGO\u2019s three founders. In the face of ample scientific skepticism about the existence of so-called dark stars, \u201cthey were making fabulous discoveries about black holes and learning what Einstein\u2019s theory told us about black holes,\u201d Brady says. \u201cThat science was leaking into the popular culture.\u201d<\/p>\n While vacationing in the U.S. with his family a few years later, he rummaged through stores searching for books on Einstein\u2019s work. \u201cAt that point, I was thoroughly fascinated with Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity. In particular, I wanted to do the math.\u201d<\/p>\n For Brady, the road to LIGO started in 1995 when he was a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University in northeastern England. Unexpectedly, he received an email from Thorne, who was a professor at the California Institute of Technology. Thorne offered him a fellowship, and Brady began working on gravitational wave detection at Caltech, developing software for analyzing and interpreting data.<\/p>\n A few years earlier, Thorne, Weiss and Ronald Drever, an experimental physicist from Scotland, had won funding for the LIGO project from the National Science Foundation, allowing them to assemble a team and begin designing the detector. The ongoing funding would eventually top $1 billion, making it the largest NSF-sponsored experiment in history. Finding a new way to look at the universe was deemed that important.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, at Parker\u2019s urging, 51ÁÔÆæ hired theoretical physicist Bruce Allen. Allen had worked at MIT with Weiss, the original designer of the LIGO apparatus, and completed his doctorate under the guidance of Hawking at Cambridge University. While visiting LIGO scientists at Caltech, Allen met Brady.<\/p>\n \u201c51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s involvement in LIGO began with Bruce Allen,\u201d Brady says. \u201cHe convinced the university soon after he arrived that hiring somebody \u2013 which turned out to be me \u2013 in gravitational waves would be a good idea.\u201d Brady accepted a position at 51ÁÔÆæ in 1999.<\/p>\n Soon after moving to Milwaukee, Brady met Rachel McGraw at a singalong at an Irish bar. They married and now live in the Riverwest neighborhood. A Milwaukee native, Rachel was a study abroad coordinator at 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s Center for International Education before she started work on a doctorate in geography at UW-Madison.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s also become my spokesperson,\u201d Brady says. \u201cShe gives the spiel at cocktail parties of what I do. She\u2019s very understanding of the complexity of the project and how long it took to get here.\u201d<\/p>\n Around the same time as Brady\u2019s arrival, 51ÁÔÆæ recruited fellow Caltech researchers Alan Wiseman and Jolien Creighton. They were helping design the LIGO computer infrastructure that would be up and running if and when a gravitational wave arrived. 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s LIGO team of data analysts was strong and getting stronger.<\/p>\n Bruce Allen moved on in 2007 to become director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany. But with Brady as the center\u2019s director, 51ÁÔÆæ continued to grow the LIGO group, recruiting Xavier Siemens later that year. And with that steady growth came research grants: During the past decade, the LIGO group has garnered some $25 million in National Science Foundation grants.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been very strategic within the last decade, adding faculty with a strategic view for gravitational-wave astronomy,\u201d Brady says. \u201cPart of the effort is to open up that field, and then to work on the science that would come after we made the first discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n The paper announcing the detection of the first gravitational wave was published on Feb. 11, 2016. It was signed by 1,004 authors from around the globe. About 20 were from 51ÁÔÆæ, including Brady, Creighton, Siemens and Wiseman. Another 20 to 40, Brady says, had close connections to 51ÁÔÆæ, usually as former students or faculty members who had moved on to other institutions.<\/p>\n The paper has been cited in more than 500 scientific articles. \u201cThat is very unusual,\u201d Brady says. \u201cMost of those articles are written by other scientists about what the meaning of this observation might be. There are all sorts of wonderful ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n The detection of gravitational waves was a \u201crevolutionary\u201d moment in modern science, Brady says. \u201cAs we learn more, we\u2019re going to understand more about how stars come to life, how they live, how they die, how the universe changes with time. It\u2019s just going to be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In spite of his modest nature, Leonard Parker is greatly respected within the scientific world. His work is widely cited. He shares the podium at conferences with the likes of Hawking and Paul Davies, an English physicist and best-selling author. At an August 2015 conference on quantum field theory in Stockholm, Sweden, Davies noted that if it weren\u2019t for Parker\u2019s work, none of the participants would have been there.<\/p>\n Through the 1970s, \u201980s and into the \u201990s, the pioneering research of Parker and colleagues Bruce Allen and John Friedman \u2013 the former chairman of the department and now professor emeritus \u2013 placed the physics department on par with some of the best in the world. That includes such places as Cambridge, Caltech and the University of Chicago, distinguished company that lifted the entire status of 51ÁÔÆæ.<\/p>\n On the shoulders of their mentors, the next generation of theorists \u2013 Brady, Creighton, Siemens and Wiseman \u2013 uphold that world-class reputation, largely through their work on gravitational waves.<\/p>\n Brady will tell you that when he was at Caltech and looking for his next assignment, he viewed Parker and his 51ÁÔÆæ colleagues as \u201crock stars\u201d in their fields. He\u2019d cut his teeth on Parker\u2019s work, and while Brady was completing his doctorate, his adviser steered him to Parker\u2019s papers on quantum field theory.<\/p>\n As a postdoctoral researcher, he and a colleague wrote and published a paper on quantum mechanics and black holes, and a short time later, during one of his first visits to 51ÁÔÆæ, he was introduced to Parker.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to Leonard\u2019s office,\u201d recalls Brady, \u201cand he said, \u2018I have your paper here. I\u2019d like you to tell me about it.\u2019\u201d Sitting elbow to elbow, the mentor and the prot\u00e9g\u00e9 went through it page by page, line by line. \u201cI was struck by the fact that Leonard wanted to sit down and understand the details.\u201d<\/p>\n Nearly 20 years later, Brady heads the center named for Parker, his patient benefactor. \u201cThe success of the Parker Center is the result of a fabulous team of faculty that historically began as a result of Leonard being here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Today, Brady and that team are mentoring the next generation of standouts, young professors and researchers exploring ideas about galaxy formation and supernovas, struggling through proofs and searching billions of light years into the past for answers that could shape the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A century after Albert Einstein’s gravitational wave prediction, meet the 51ÁÔÆæ scientists who helped prove him correct, his doubts wrong, and cemented the school’s status as a premier research institution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2985,"featured_media":36449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[],"section":[140,139],"display_categories":[114,115],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[158,161],"class_list":["post-36373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","section-science","section-science-technology","display_categories-top-story-primary","display_categories-top-story-secondary","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-hard-science"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Patrick](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/08\/Brady.jpg\")
\nis betrayed by a slight brogue.<\/p>\n![\"51ÁÔÆæ](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2016\/08\/AM16LigoCrewFinal.jpg\")