Julian Schwinger (1918-1994)

Abstract

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 Sin-itiro Tomonaga. But although this triumph was undoubtedly his most heroic accomplishment, his legacy lives on chiefly through subtle and elegant work in classical electrodynamics, quantum variational principles, proper-time methods, quantum anomalies, dynamical mass generation, partial symmetry, and more. Starting as just a boy, he rapidly became the pre-eminent nuclear physicist in the late 1930s, led the theoretical development of radar technology at MIT during World War II, and then, soon after the war, conquered quantum electrodynamics, and became the leading quantum field theorist for two decades, before taking a more iconoclastic route during his last quarter century.