MIT reported on Nov. 10, 2026, that Jeffrey Goldstone, a professor emeritus of physics and holder of the Cecil and Ida Green chair, died Oct. 12 at age 93. He had been a member of the MIT physics community for 49 years, the university said.

Goldstone was known for work in quantum field theory and for contributions to quantum optimization algorithms. He is the namesake of the Goldstone boson and the Goldstone theorem, which MIT colleagues described as foundational to the Standard Model of particle physics and to early-universe cosmology, among other areas. He also worked on light-cone quantization of relativistic strings and, later in his career, on quantum computation.

Born in 1933 in Manchester, England, Goldstone earned a PhD from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge in 1958 and joined the MIT faculty in 1977; he was appointed to the Green chair in 1983 and directed MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics from 1983 to 1989. MIT said his family is planning a memorial in 2027. According to the report, he is survived by his son Andrew Goldstone, daughter-in-law Anne Dewitt and granddaughter Helen.