Related papers: Julian Schwinger: Nuclear Physics, the Radiation L…
We recount the successful long career of classical physics, from Newton to Einstein, which was based on the philosophy of scientific realism. Special emphasis is given to the changing status and number of ontological entitities and…
These lectures illustrate the key ideas of modern renormalization theory and effective field theories in the context of simple nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and the Schr\"odinger equation. They also discuss problems in QED, QCD and…
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,…
A biographical profile of the theoretical physicist, Julian Schwinger, and a discussion of "The Memories of Julian" Centennial Celebration (held at Harvard University on February 12, 2018) is presented herein.
Physics was in crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century because the newborn Maxwell's electromagnetism defied mechanistic preconceptions. Albert Einstein understood that the solution to the crisis required an audacious reworking of…
John Archibald Wheeler was a theoretical physicist who worked on both down-to-earth projects and highly speculative ideas, and always emphasized the importance of experiment and observation, even when speculating wildly. His research and…
Similarities between the non-deterministic nature of quantum theory and the unpredictable patterns of human cognition and decision making have been observed and commented on many times since the invention of Quantum Mechanics in the first…
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…
Quantum electrodynamics is the well-accepted theory. However, we feel it is useful to look at formalisms that provide alternative ways to describe light, because in the recent years the development of quantum field theories based primarily…
This article is a summary of a talk about Richard Feynman, given at a conference Polymaths across the Eras organized in November 2023 by the St Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics (HAPP) in Oxford. It describes Feynman as…
Work of Lev Landau had a profound impact on the physics in 20th century. Landau had created the paradigms that had framed the conversations on the outstanding problems in physics for decades. He has laid the foundations for our…
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 mechanics can be formulated in three ways, as Heisenberg, Schr\"odinger and Feynman did respectively. For the last way, an unknown (i.e. forgotten) forerunner exists, that we have found in a paper by Gregor Wentzel, published before…
The origin of quantum physics was the discovery of the base unit of electromagnetic action $h$ by Max Planck in 1900 when he analyzed the experimental results of the black body radiation. This permitted Albert Einstein a few years later to…
In the 1930s the German physicist Erich Regener (1881-1955) did important work on the measurement of the rate of production of ionisation deep under-water and in the atmosphere. He discovered, along with one of his students, Georg Pfotzer,…
Starting from the earlier notions of stationary action principles, we show how Schwinger's Quantum Action Principle descended from Dirac's formulation, which independently led Feynman to his path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics.…
Dawning neutron physics was more complex than one might expect. The chance that the neutron comprised a proton and an electron was diffusely taken into account after the discovery of the neutron. Moreover, uncertainties persisted about the…
One of the greatest scientific achievements of physics in the 20th century is the discovery of quantum mechanics. The Schrodinger equation is the most fundamental equation in quantum mechanics describing the time-based evolution of the…
Renormalization began as a tool to eliminate divergences in quantum electrodynamics but it is now the basis of our understanding of physics at different energy scales. I review its evolution with an eye towards physics beyond the Wilsonian…
We sketch the foundations of classical electrodynamics, in particular the transition that took place when Einstein, in 1915, succeeded to formulate general relativity. In 1916 Einstein demonstrated that, with a choice of suitable variables…