Julian Schwinger

A classic from 1969, this book is based on a series of lectures delivered at the Les Houches Summer School of Theoretical Physics in 1955. The book outlines a general scheme of quantum kinematics and dynamics.

In the post-quantum-mechanics era, few physicists, if any, have matched Julian Schwinger in contributions to and influence on the development of physics. A deep and provocative thinker, Schwinger left his indelible mark on all areas of theoretical physics; an eloquent lecturer and immensely successful mentor, he was gentle, intensely private, and known for being “modest about everything except his physics”. This book is a collection of talks in memory of him by some of his contemporaries and his former students: A Klein, F Dyson, B DeWitt, W Kohn, D Saxon, P C Martin, K Johnson, S Deser, R Finkelstein, Y J Ng, H Feshbach, L Brown, S Glashow, K A Milton, and C N Yang. From it, one can get a glimpse of Julian Schwinger, the physicist, the teacher, and the man. Altogether, this book is a must for all physicists, physics students, and others who are interested in great legends. Contents:Recollections of Julian Schwinger (A Klein)Schwinger's Response to the Award of an Honorary Degree at NottinghamSchwinger's “The Greening of Quantum Field Theory: George and I” (F Dyson)The Uses and Implications of Curved-Spacetime Propagators: A Personal View (B DeWitt)Overview of Density Functional Theory (W Kohn)Julian Schwinger Memorial Tribute (D Saxon)Julian Schwinger — Personal Recollections (P C Martin)Julian Schwinger — Personal Recollections (K Johnson)Julian Schwinger — Personal Recollections (S Deser)Julian Schwinger: The QED Period at Michigan and the Source Theory Period at UCLA (R Finkelstein)Schwinging a Sorcerer's Wand: Julian and I (Y J Ng)Julian Schwinger — Reminiscences and Nuclear Physics (H Feshbach)An Important Schwinger Legacy: Theoretical Tools (L Brown)The Road to Electroweak Unification (S Glashow)Julian Schwinger: Source Theory and the UCLA Years — from Magnetic Charge to the Casimir Effect (K A Milton)Julian Schwinger (C N Yang) Readership: Graduate students in physics and physicists. keywords:Biography of Julian Schwinger;Quantum Electrodynamics;Renormalization Theory;Quantum Field Theory;Electroweak Unification;Green's Functions;Source Theory;Nuclear Physics;Theoretical Physics;Variational Principles “This is a very interesting book about Julian Schwinger from many very different view points.” C N Yang, Nobel Laureate SUNY, Stony Brook “This book gives special insights into one of the great minds of 20th century theoretical physics.” Frank Close Rutherford Appleton Lab. “… it provides a fascinating and inspiring insight into the life and work of one of the true giants of theoretical physics. This is a book many physicists will want to read.” T W B Kibble Imperial College “It is a nice collection of reminiscences by his close friends. I very much enjoyed reading it.” T Eguchi Univ. of Tokyo “Many of the contributions make fascinating reading.” CERN Courier “There are two valuable appendices as well: a list of Schwinger's doctoral students and his updated publication list … The articles are varied in slant, but all are delightful … One picks up interesting and varying insights from the different contributions here.” Sam Treiman Physics Today

Classical Electrodynamics captures Schwinger's inimitable lecturing style, in which everything flows inexorably from what has gone before. Novel elements of the approach include the immediate inference of Maxwell's equations from Coulomb's law and (Galilean) relativity, the use of action and stationary principles, the central role of Green's functions both in statics and dynamics, and, throughout, the integration of mathematics and physics. Thus, physical problems in electrostatics are used to develop the properties of Bessel functions and spherical harmonics. The latter portion of the book is devoted to radiation, with rather complete treatments of synchrotron radiation and diffraction, and the formulation of the mode decomposition for waveguides and scattering. Consequently, the book provides the student with a thorough grounding in electrodynamics in particular, and in classical field theory in general, subjects with enormous practical applications, and which are essential prerequisites for the study of quantum field theory.An essential resource for both physicists and their students, the book includes a ?Reader's Guide,? which describes the major themes in each chapter, suggests a possible path through the book, and identifies topics for inclusion in, and exclusion from, a given course, depending on the instructor's preference. Carefully constructed problems complement the material of the text, and introduce new topics. The book should be of great value to all physicists, from first-year graduate students to senior researchers, and to all those interested in electrodynamics, field theory, and mathematical physics.The text for the graduate classical electrodynamics course was left unfinished upon Julian Schwinger's death in 1994, but was completed by his coauthors, who have brilliantly recreated the excitement of Schwinger's novel approach.

Julian Schwinger was one of the leading theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. His contributions are as important, and as pervasive, as those of Richard Feynman, with whom (and with Sin-itiro Tomonaga) he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics. Yet, while Feynman is universallyrecognized as a cultural icon, Schwinger is little known even to many within the physics community. In his youth, Julian Schwinger was a nuclear physicist, turning to classical electrodynamics after World War II. In the years after the war, he was the first to renormalize quantum electrodynamics.Subsequently, he presented the most complete formulation of quantum field theory and laid the foundations for the electroweak synthesis of Glashow, Weinberg, and Salam, and he made fundamental contributions to the theory of nuclear magnetic resonance, to many-body theory, and to quantum optics. Hedeveloped a unique approach to quantum mechanics, measurement algebra, and a general quantum action principle. His discoveries include 'Feynman's' parameters and 'Glauber's' coherent states; in later years he also developed an alternative to operator field theory which he called Source Theory,reflecting his profound phenomenological bent. His late work on the Thomas-Fermi model of atoms and on the Casimir effect continues to be an inspiration to a new generation of physicists. This biography describes the many strands of his research life, while tracing the personal life of this privateand gentle genius.

In the post-quantum-mechanics era, few physicists, if any, have matched Julian Schwinger in contributions to and influence on the development of physics. A deep and provocative thinker, Schwinger left his indelible mark on all areas of theoretical physics; an eloquent lecturer and immensely successful mentor, he was gentle, intensely private, and known for being ?modest about everything except his physics?. This book is a collection of talks in memory of him by some of his contemporaries and his former students: A Klein, F Dyson, B DeWitt, W Kohn, D Saxon, P C Martin, K Johnson, S Deser, R Finkelstein, Y J Ng, H Feshbach, L Brown, S Glashow, K A Milton, and C N Yang. From it, one can get a glimpse of Julian Schwinger, the physicist, the teacher, and the man. Altogether, this book is a must for all physicists, physics students, and others who are interested in great legends.

Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) was one of the giants of 20th Century science. He contributed to a broad range of topics in theoretical physics, ranging from classical electrodynamics to quantum mechanics, from nuclear physics through quantum electrodynamics to the general theory of quantum fields. Although his mathematical prowess was legendary, he was fundamentally a phenomenologist. He received many awards, including the first Einstein Prize in 1951, and the Nobel Prize in 1965, which he shared with Richard Feynman and Sin-itiro Tomonaga for the self-consistent formulation of quantum electrodynamics into a practical theory. His more than 70 doctoral students have played a decisive role in the development of science in the second half of this century. This important volume includes many of Schwinger's most important papers, on the above and other topics, such as the theory of angular momentum and the theory of many-body systems. The papers collected here continue to underlie much of the work done by theoretical physicists today. Contents:Quantum ElectrodynamicsSpin and Angular MomentumNuclear PhysicsClassical Electrodynamics, Diffraction, and Synchrotron RadiationQuantum Field TheoryMany Body TheoryQuantum MechanicsImportance of ResearchMagnetic ChargeSource TheoryDeep Inelastic ScatteringCasimir EffectSupersymmetryStatistical Atom Readership: Theoretical physicists, mathematicians and historians of science. Keywords:Spin and Angular Momentum;Nuclear Physics;Microwave Radiation;Synchrotron Radiation;Electrodynamics;Quantum Electrodynamics;Renormalization Theory;Quantum Field Theory;Quantum Mechanics;Many-Body Theory;Magnetic Charge;Casimir Effect;Source TheoryReviews: “Overall the presentation is excellent: the introductions bring Schwinger's work to life.” Mathematics Abstracts “… it is hard to imagine what physics would be like at the end of the millennium without the contributions of Julian Schwinger, a private man but a great scientist and a superb teacher with dozens of the now best established theoretical physicists among his students, including three Nobel laureates …” CERN Courier “Schwinger's work was independent, brilliant and often very original.” Mathematical Reviews

The Julian Schwinger Centennial Conference of 2018 assembled many of Schwinger's students, colleagues, and friends to celebrate this towering figure of twentieth century physics one hundred years after his birth. This proceedings volume collects talks delivered on this occasion. They cover a wide range of topics, all related to Schwinger's rich scientific legacy — supplemented by personal recollections about Julian Schwinger, the physicist, the teacher, and the gentleman.Also included are an essay of 1985, co-authored by Schwinger but not published previously, as well as the transcripts of speeches by distinguished colleagues at the 1978 gathering when Schwinger's sixtieth birthday was celebrated.

This monumental collection of 34 historical papers on quantum electrodynamics features contributions by the 20th century's leading physicists: Dyson, Fermi, Feynman, Foley, Oppenheimer, Pauli, Weisskopf, and others. Twenty-nine are in English, three in German, and one each in French and Italian. Editor Julian Schwinger won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in quantum electrodynamics.