Related papers: In Memory of Julian Schwinger
The development of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is sketched from its earliest beginnings until the formulations of 1949, using the example of the divergent self-energy of the electron as a quintessential problem of the 1930's-40's. The…
Erwin Schr\"odinger is famous for presenting his wave equation of motion that jump-started quantum mechanics. His disenchantment with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics led him to unveil the Schr\"odinger's cat paradox,…
David Brink was one of the leading theoretical nuclear physicists of his generation. He made major contributions to the study of all aspects of nuclear physics embracing nuclear structure, nuclear scattering, and nuclear instability. His…
It is not very well known that the philosopher Karl Popper has been one of the foremost critics of the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics for about six decades. This paper reconstructs in detail most of Popper's activities on…
James Philip Elliott, one of the towering figures of nuclear physics of the second half of the twentieth century, died on the 21st of October 2008. Obituaries appeared in the British press but relatively little attention was paid by the…
Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is considered the most accurate theory in the history of science. However, this precision is based on a single experimental value: the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron (g-factor). An examination of the…
In this note, we discuss a historical point regarding Schr\"odinger's discovery of the famous quantum wave equation in 1926 following de Broglie's fundamental works published in 1923-1925 regarding the introduction of matter waves. Drawing…
James Chadwick is known for his discovery of the neutron. Many of his earlier findings and ideas in the context of weak and strong nuclear forces are much less known. This biographical sketch attempts to highlight the achievements of a…
Steven Weinberg, renowned particle theorist and Nobel laureate, passed away in July 2021. We discuss selections of his work on effective field theory, electroweak unification, and symmetry related topics. We then add a few memories of…
From its seemingly non-intuitive and puzzling nature, most evident in numerous EPR-like gedankenexperiments to its almost ubiquitous presence in quantum technologies, entanglement is at the heart of modern quantum physics. First introduced…
Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…
Heisenberg's breakthrough in his July 1925 paper that set in motion the development of Quantum Mechanics through subsequent papers by Born, Jordan, Heisenberg and also Dirac (from 1925 to 1927) is reexamined through a modern lens. In this…
Quantum Eletrodynamics (QED) is considered as the most successful of all physical theories. It can predict numerical values of physical quantities to a spectacular degree of accuracy. However, from the very early days it has been known…
The life of Ernst Ising and the steps to solving the model named after him are reported in parallel. Wilhelm Lenz suggested his student Ernst Ising to explain the existence of ferromagnetism on the basis of his publication in 1920. The…
A scientific biography of John Ward, who was responsible for the Ward Identity in quantum electrodynamics; the first detailed calculation of the quantum entanglement of two photons in electron-positron annihilation with Maurice Pryce; the…
We provide a pedagogical review of the Schwinger effect, i.e., the non-perturbative production of particle and anti-particle pairs from the vacuum by strong fields, as well as related strong-field phenomena. Beginning with an overview of…
Simultaneously with inventing the modern relativistic formalism of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman presented also a first-quantized representation of QED in terms of worldline path integrals. Although this alternative formulation has been…
The Schwinger Model from Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) has long served as a valuable simplified model for exploring key physical phenomena in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)-a field rich with fundamental insights but is substantially more…
Expository paper providing a historical survey of the gradual transformation of the "philosophical discussions" between Bohr, Einstein and Schr\"odinger on foundational issues in quantum mechanics into a quantitative prediction of a new…
Several years ago Schwinger proposed a physical mechanism for sonoluminescence in terms of photon production due to changes in the properties of the quantum-electrodynamic (QED) vacuum arising from a collapsing dielectric bubble. This…