- Abraham Pais (1918-2000) was a Dutch-born American physicist and science historian. Pais earned his Ph.D. from University of Utrecht just prior to a Nazi ban on Jewish participation in Dutch universities during World War II. During World War II, Pais's doctoral dissertation had attracted the attention of Niels Bohr, who invited him to come to Denmark as his assistant. Pais was forced into hiding before he could leave the Netherlands. In 1946, following the war, Pais was able to accept that invitation and served as a personal assistant to Bohr at his country home in Tisvilde for a year. In 1947 he accepted a position at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in the United States and thus became a colleague of Albert Einstein. For the next 25 years he worked on elementary particle theory with a primary interest in quantum field theory and symmetry. This contribution from 1949 to the Dutch Royal Academy of Science is an attempt to overcome, within the framework of quantum mechanics, the well known difficulty of the present day theories of elementary partickes, viz. their yielding infinite self energies. The technical contributions for which he is recognized include a precise definition of G-parity with Res Jost, and his treatment of SU(6) symmetry breaking. Pais later wrote books on the history of physics and the lives of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. He was a physics professor at Rockefeller University until his retirement. (Wikipedia).