page_title: Mendel Sachs
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Mendel Sachs / Biography / Career
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste Français&#160;: Centre international de physique théorique à Trieste
context_page_description: Mendel Sachs was an American theoretical physicist. His scientific work includes the proposal of a unified field theory that brings together the weak force, strong force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
context_section_description: Following the award of his PhD in 1954 Sachs first post-doctoral position was at the new University of California Radiation Laboratory at both Berkeley and Livermore, which was run by Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence and was also home to Bryce DeWitt, who Sachs would later co-author articles with in Physics Today. The new laboratory was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons. In his new job Sachs intended to get in contact with Albert Einstein at his office  at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton to arrange an appointment to discuss his research program. Sachs wanted to explore with him the features of nonlocality and nonlinearity that are absent in the quantum theory, but must be present in a field theory. Unfortunately Einstein died in April 1955 and Sachs never had the opportunity to talk to him about his ideas.
  In 1956 Sachs became a Senior Scientist at Lockheed Missiles and Space Laboratory, Based in Sunnyvale and adjacent to the NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center, Moffett Field, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space Systems was and continues to be one of the most important satellite development and manufacturing plants in the United States, covering 412 acres. While at Lockheed Sachs began developing with Solomon Schwebel a field theory of quantum electrodynamics that included broken symmetries that did not require recourse to renormalization or perturbation techniques – the "Schwebel-Sachs" model. During this time Sachs was also employed as Assistant Professor of Physics at San Jose State College. In 1961 he became a Research Professor at McGill University; this was followed by a post as Associate Professor of Physics at Boston University (1962–1966).
  In 1964 while at Boston University Sachs received an invitation from Paul Dirac to visit Cambridge University. Sachs, his wife and children first stayed for a one-month in Ireland, at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies where Sachs discuss various problems with Cornelius Lanczos, who had been one of Einstein's assistants in Berlin in the 1920s. Sachs also had discussions with Lanczos' colleagues John Lighton Synge, J. R. McConnell and Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh. Following his trip to Ireland, Sachs stayed in England for three months where his wife Yetty had family. Sachs worked with Paul Dirac at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University. While working with Dirac, Sachs also had the opportunity to discuss ideas with John G. Taylor, John Polkinghorne and graduate students at DAMTP.
  In 1965 Sachs had had a breakthrough while at the Aspen Physics Institute, Colorado. Sachs was able to derive a result for a unified field theory if quantum mechanics was considered to be a linear approximation for a field theory of inertia expressed in general relativity. Sachs argued that the work of Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger in general relativity did not yet take account of the inertia of matter, which required consideration of the Mach principle. In the summer of 1966 Abdus Salam invited Sachs to spend a few months at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, Italy. During this time Sachs published the details of his formal structure of quantum mechanics from a generally covariant field theory of inertia in the Italian journal, Il Nuovo Cimento.
  In the Autumn of 1966 he was appointed Professor of Physics at State University of New York at Buffalo.
  Sachs was an editor for the International Journal of Theoretical Physics.
  On his retirement in 1997 he was given the title Professor of Physics Emeritus. A symposium was held in Sachs honour to mark his retirement, the event was attended by Nobel laureates Willis E. Lamb and Herbert A. Hauptman and a subsequent festschrift was published. Sachs published 13 books and over 200 journal articles during his life.
caption: Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics where Sachs published his unified field theory.
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