Julian Schwinger

Julian Schwinger
Schwinger in 1965
Born
Julian Seymour Schwinger

(1918-02-12)February 12, 1918
DiedJuly 16, 1994(1994-07-16) (aged 76)
Alma mater
Known for
SpouseClarice Carrol (m. 1947) (1917-2011)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsQuantum field theory
Institutions
ThesisOn the magnetic scattering of neutrons (1939)
Doctoral advisorIsidor Isaac Rabi
Doctoral students

Julian Seymour Schwinger (/ˈʃwɪŋər/; February 12, 1918 – July 16, 1994) was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Richard Feynman and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He developed a relativistically invariant perturbation theory, and renormalized QED to one loop order. Schwinger was a physics professor at several universities.

Schwinger is recognized as an important physicist, responsible for much of modern quantum field theory, including a variational approach, and the equations of motion for quantum fields. He developed the first electroweak model, and the first example of confinement in 1+1 dimensions. He is responsible for the theory of multiple neutrinos, Schwinger terms, and the theory of the spin-3/2 field. He shared the inaugural Albert Einstein Award with Kurt Gödel.