29 Facts About Julian Schwinger

Julian Seymour Schwinger was a Nobel Prize-winning American theoretical physicist.

Julian Schwinger is best known for his work on quantum electrodynamics, in particular for developing a relativistically invariant perturbation theory, and for renormalizing QED to one loop order.

Julian Schwinger developed the first electroweak model, and the first example of confinement in 1+1 dimensions.

Julian Seymour Schwinger was born in New York City, to Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Belle and Benjamin Schwinger, a garment manufacturer, who had emigrated from Poland to the United States.

Julian's older brother Harold Schwinger was born in 1911, seven years before Julian who was born in 1918.

Julian Schwinger attended the Townsend Harris High School from 1932 to 1934, a highly regarded high school for gifted students at the time.

Julian Schwinger later commented that this switch was in part a way to retain greater intellectual independence and avoid being "dominated" by Breit and Wigner by simply reducing the duration of contact with them by working different hours.

Julian Schwinger obtained his PhD overseen by Rabi in 1939 at the age of 21.

Julian Schwinger provided theoretical support for the development of radar.

Julian Schwinger developed an affinity for Green's functions from his radar work, and he used these methods to formulate quantum field theory in terms of local Green's functions in a relativistically invariant way.

Julian Schwinger developed renormalization, formulating quantum electrodynamics unambiguously to one-loop order.

Julian Schwinger's approach started with a quantum action and allowed bosons and fermions to be treated equally for the first time, using a differential form of Grassman integration.

Julian Schwinger gave elegant proofs for the spin-statistics theorem and the CPT theorem, and noted that the field algebra led to anomalous Schwinger terms in various classical identities, because of short distance singularities.

Julian Schwinger discovered that neutrinos come in multiple varieties, one for the electron and one for the muon.

Julian Schwinger attempted to formulate a theory of quantum electrodynamics with point magnetic monopoles, a program which met with limited success because monopoles are strongly interacting when the quantum of charge is small.

Julian Schwinger had a mixed relationship with his colleagues, because he always pursued independent research, different from mainstream fashion.

In particular, Julian Schwinger developed the source theory, a phenomenological theory for the physics of elementary particles, which is a predecessor of the modern effective field theory.

The criticisms by his Harvard colleagues led Julian Schwinger to leave the faculty in 1972 for UCLA.

Julian Schwinger resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers.

Julian Schwinger felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated.

Julian Schwinger was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics, along with Richard Feynman and Shin'ichiro Tomonaga.

In 1987, Julian Schwinger received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Julian Schwinger was more formally inclined and favored symbolic manipulations in quantum field theory.

Julian Schwinger worked with local field operators, and found relations between them, and he felt that physicists should understand the algebra of local fields, no matter how paradoxical it was.

Julian Schwinger disliked Feynman diagrams because he felt that they made the student focus on the particles and forget about local fields, which in his view inhibited understanding.

Julian Schwinger went so far as to ban them altogether from his class, although he understood them perfectly well.

Feynman used a regulator, while Julian Schwinger was able to formally renormalize to one loop without an explicit regulator.

Julian Schwinger believed in the formalism of local fields, while Feynman had faith in the particle paths.

Julian Schwinger is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery;, where is the fine structure constant, is engraved above his name on his tombstone.