Martinus Justinus Godefriedus Veltman was born inWaalwijk, Netherlands, on 27 June 1931. His father was the head of the local primary school. Three of his father's siblings were primary school teachers. His mother's father was a contractor and also ran a café. He was the fourth child in a family with six children. He started studying mathematics and physics atUtrecht University in 1948.[6]
As a youth he had a great interest in radio electronics, which was a difficult hobby to work on because the occupying German army had confiscated most of the available radio equipment.[6]
In 1955, he became an assistant to Prof. Michels of the Van Der Waals laboratory inAmsterdam. Michels was an experimental physicist, working in high pressure physics. His primary task was the upkeep of a large library collection and occasional lecture preparations for Michels.
His research career advanced when he moved toUtrecht to work underLéon Van Hove in 1955. He received hisMSc degree in 1956, after which he was drafted into military service for two years, returning in February 1959. Van Hove then hired him as a doctoral researcher. He obtained hisPhD degree in theoretical physics in 1963 and became professor at Utrecht University in 1966.[6]
In 1960, Van Hove became director of the theory division atCERN inGeneva, Switzerland, the European High Energy laboratory. Veltman followed him there in 1961. Meanwhile, in 1960, he married his wife Anneke, who gave birth to their daughter Hélène in the Netherlands, before moving to Geneva to live with Martinus. Hélène followed in her father's footsteps and in due time completed her particle physics thesis withMary Gaillard atBerkeley, though she now works in the financial industry inLondon.[6]
In 1963/64, during an extended stay atSLAC he designed the computer programSchoonschip for symbolic manipulation of mathematical equations, which is now considered the very firstcomputer algebra system.
Veltman was closely involved in the 1963 CERN neutrino experiment, analyzing images as they were generated by the detectors. When no spectacular events came out, enthusiasm waned, and after a while Veltman and Bernardini were the only ones analyzing the images. As a result, Veltman became the spokesman for the group at the Brookhaven Conference in 1963.[6]
In 1971,Gerardus 't Hooft, who was completing his PhD under the supervision of Veltman,renormalizedYang–Mills theory. They showed that if the symmetries of Yang–Mills theory were to be realized in thespontaneously broken mode, referred to as theHiggs mechanism, then Yang–Mills theory can be renormalized.[7][8] Renormalization of Yang–Mills theory is a major achievement of twentieth century physics.
Eventually, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1999 with 't Hooft, "for elucidating the quantum structure ofelectroweak interactions in physics".[6] Veltman and 't Hooft joined in the celebrations atUtrecht University when the prize was awarded.
In 2003, Veltman published a book about particle physics for a broad audience, entitledFacts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics.
On 4 January 2021, Veltman died in his home inBilthoven, the Netherlands.[12]
Veltman, M."Perturbation Theory of Massive Yang-Mills Fields", Utrecht Rijksuniversiteit (Netherlands). Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica. Paris Univ., Orsay (France). Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies, (Aug. 1968).
^van Delft, Dirk (2023).Verrek, dat is 't! Het strijdvaardige leven van Nobelprijswinnaar Martinus Veltman (in Dutch). Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Prometheus.ISBN9789044652970.
