physics

John Hagelin

John Hagelin is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Hagelin rather than just read about it. In short: John Samuel Hagelin (; born June 9, 1954) is an American physicist and the leader of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in the United States. He was president of Maharishi International University (MIU), formerly Maharishi University of Management (MUM), in Fairfield, Iowa, and honorary chair of its board of trustees.

Key takeaways

John Hagelin belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Hagelin to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Hagelin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Samuel Hagelin (; born June 9, 1954) is an American physicist and the leader of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in the United States. He was president of Maharishi International University (MIU), formerly Maharishi University of Management (MUM), in Fairfield, Iowa, and honorary chair of its board of trustees. In 1981, Hagelin graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and then did several months of post-doctoral research at CERN. He went on to do post-doctoral work at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC). In 1984, he became a professor of physics at MIU, and later became the university's president. Hagelin postulates that his extended version of unified field theory is identified with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's "unified field of consciousness", but this view was rejected by "virtually every theoretical physicist in the world" in 2006. Hagelin has published over 70 papers about particle physics, electroweak unification, grand unification, supersymmetry, and cosmology, most of them in academic scientific journals, and co-authored a 1983 paper in "Physics Letters B", that became one of the 103 most-cited articles in the physical sciences in 1983 and 1984. A 1984 paper by Hagelin and John Ellis in "Nuclear Physics B", "Supersymmetric relics from the big bang", had been cited over 500 times by 2007. Hagelin stood as a candidate for President of the United States for the Natural Law Party, a party founded by the TM movement, in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections. He is the author of Manual for a Perfect Government (1998), which sets out how to apply "natural law" to matters of governance. Hagelin is also the president of the David Lynch Foundation, that promotes TM as a remedy for "trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations.".

Early life and education Hagelin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the second of four sons, to Mary Lee Hagelin (née Stephenson), a schoolteacher, and Carl William Hagelin, a businessman. He was raised in Connecticut and won a scholarship to the Taft School for boys in Watertown. In July 1970, while at Taft, he was involved in a motorcycle crash that led to a long stay—in a body cast—in the school infirmary. During his time there, he began reading about quantum mechanics but was also introduced to TM by a practitioner, Rick Archer, who had been invited to the school to talk about the meditation form, TM. After Taft, Hagelin attended Dartmouth College. At the end of his freshman year, he studied TM in Vittel, France, and returned as a qualified TM teacher. In 1975, he obtained his A.B. in physics with highest honors (summa cum laude) from Dartmouth. He went on to study physics at Harvard University under Howard Georgi, earning a master's degree in 1976 and a Ph.D. in 1981. By the time he had received his Ph.D., he had published several papers on particle theory.

Career

Academic positions

In 1981, Hagelin became a postdoctoral researcher at the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland, and in 1982, he moved to SLAC in California. He left SLAC in 1983. A year later, he joined Maharishi International University (MIU) as chair of the physics department. Two of Hagelin's previous collaborators, Dimitri Nanopoulos and John Ellis, were uncomfortable with his move to MIU, but they continued to work with him. While at MIU, Hagelin received funding from the National Science Foundation. Hagelin became a trustee of MUM and, in 2016, its president. It was intended that he become president of Maharishi Central University, which was under construction in Smith Center, Kansas, until early 2008, when, according to Hagelin, the project was put on hold while the TM organization dealt with the death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Kilby International Award In 1992, Hagelin received a Kilby International Award from the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce "for his promising work in particle physics in the development of supersymmetric grand unified field theory". According to a member of the selection committee, Hagelin's nomination was proposed by another selection-committee member who was a fellow TM practitioner. Chris Anderson, in a 1992 Nature article about Hagelin's first presidential campaign, questioned the value of the award.

Theoretical physics During his time at CERN, SLAC and MUM, Hagelin worked on supersymmetric extensions of the standard model and grand unification theories. His work on the flipped SU(5) heterotic superstring theory is considered one of the more successful unified field theories, or "theories of everything", and was highlighted in 1991 in a cover story in Discover magazine. From 1979 to 1996, Hagelin published 73 papers about particle physics, electroweak unification, grand unification, supersymmetry and cosmology, most of them in academic scientific journals. He co-authored a 1983 paper in Physics Letters B, "Weak symmetry breaking by radiative corrections in broken supergravity", that became one of the 103 most-cited articles in the physical sciences in 1983 and 1984. In a 2012 interview in Science Watch, co-author Keith Olive said that his work for the 1984 study was one of the areas that had given him the greatest sense of accomplishment. A 1984 paper by Hagelin and John Ellis in Nuclear Physics B, "Supersymmetric relics from the big bang", had been cited over 500 times by 2007.

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Hagelin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Hagelin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Hagelin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Hagelin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Hagelin

In research: John Hagelin appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Hagelin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Hagelin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, 20th-century American physicists, American particle physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Hagelin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Hagelin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Hagelin means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Hagelin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Hagelin in simple terms?

Why does John Hagelin matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Hagelin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Hagelin.