Related papers: Julian Schwinger: Nuclear Physics, the Radiation L…
Julian Schwinger's influence on Twentieth Century science is profound and pervasive. Of course, he is most famous for his renormalization theory of quantum electrodynamics, for which he shared the Nobel Prize with Richard Feynman and…
Although he was the recipient of a Nobel Prize and despite the greatness of his accomplishments, Julian Schwinger is almost an unsung hero of our age . He is relatively unknown to the general population, even though in the physics community…
Julian Schwinger (1918--1994), founder of renormalized quantum electrodynamics, was arguably the leading theoretical physicist of the second half of the 20th century. Thus it is not surprising that he made contributions to gravity theory as…
The career and accomplishments of Julian Schwinger, who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965, have been reviewed in numerous books and articles. For this reason these Memories, which seek to convey a sense of Schwinger's remarkable…
I recall my interactions with Julian Schwinger, first as a graduate student at Harvard, and then as a postdoc at UCLA, in the period 1968--81, and subsequently. Some aspects of his legacy to physics are discussed.
Julian Schwinger began the construction of Source Theory in 1966 in response to the then apparent failure of quantum field theory to describe strong interactions, the physical remoteness of renormalization, and the utility of effective…
In 1965 the Nobel Foundation honored Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics and the consequences for the physics of elementary particles. In contrast to both of his…
In the early 1980s, Schwinger made seminal contributions to the semiclassical theory of atoms. There had, of course, been earlier attempts at improving upon the Thomas--Fermi model of the 1920s. Yet, a consistent derivation of the leading…
Particular families of special functions, conceived as purely mathematical devices between the end of XVIII and the beginning of XIX centuries, have played a crucial role in the development of many aspects of modern Physics. This is indeed…
In 1963, Eugene Paul Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry…
In the present article, we discuss one of the basic relations of Quantum Mechanics - the Uncertainty Relation (UR). In 1930, few years after Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger generalized the famous Uncertainty Relation in Quantum Mechanics,…
The breadth of Eugene Wigner's interests and contributions is amazing and humbling. At different times in his life he did seminal work in areas as diverse as pure mathematics and chemical engineering. His seminal research in physics is, of…
Schroedinger's equation gave early quantum theory a visual language that looked like physics again: a wave evolving by a linear differential equation. This essay argues that the same success also seeded a recurring impulse to keep quantum…
In the realm of physics, a pivotal moment occurred six decades ago when Brian Josephson made a groundbreaking prediction, setting in motion a series of events that would eventually earn him the prestigious Nobel Prize eleven years later.…
Starting from the earlier notions of stationary action principles, we show how Julian Schwinger's Quantum Action Principle descended from Dirac's formulation, which independently led Feynman to his path-integral formulation of quantum…
Modern atomic and nuclear physics took its start in the early part of the twentieth century, to a large extent based upon experimental investigations of radioactive phenomena. Foremost among the pioneers of the new kind of physics was…
We have two aims. The main one is to expound the idea of renormalization in quantum field theory, with no technical prerequisites (Sections 2 and 3). Our motivation is that renormalization is undoubtedly one of the great ideas, and great…
The theory of Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics was created (or discovered) back in the 1920's mainly by Schr\"odinger and Heisenberg, but it is fair enough to say that a more modern and unified approach to the subject was introduced by…
Feynman's path integral formulation arose from his attempt to incorporate the Lagrangian framework into quantum mechanics, offering what he regarded as a more fundamental perspective than the Hamiltonian approach, particularly in the…
Now that we have reached the centennial of Erwin Schrodinger's seminal paper introducing the wavefunction theory of matter, it is right and proper to inquire as to its legacy. It is undeniable that today every paper in atomic physics cites…