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Book
Author Schweber, S. S. (Silvan S.)

Title QED and the men who made it : Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga / Silvan S. Schweber
Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1994]
©1994

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  537.6709 Sch/Qat  AVAILABLE
Description xxviii, 732 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Series Princeton series in physics
Princeton series in physics.
Contents Machine derived contents note: Table of contents for QED and the men who made it : Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga / Silvan S. Schweber. -- Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog -- Information from electronic data provided by the publisher. May be incomplete or contain other coding. -- Preface xi -- Acknowledgments xvi -- Introduction xxi -- 1. The Birth of Quantum Field Theory 1 -- 1.1 Introduction 1 -- 1.2 Pascual Jordan 5 -- 1.3 P.A.M. Dirac and the Birth of Quantum Electrodynamics 11 -- 1.4 Jordan and the Quantization of Matter Waves 33 -- 1.5 Heisenberg and Pauli: The Quantum Theory of Wave Fields 39 -- 1.6 Hole Theory 56 -- 1.7 Postscript: Dirac and Scientific Creativity 70 -- 1.8 Fermi and the Regaining of Anschaulischkeit 72 -- 2. The 1930s 76 -- 2.1 Introduction 76 -- 2.2 QED during the 1930s 76 -- 2.3 The Warsaw Conference of 1939 93 -- 2.4 The Washington Conference of 1941 104 -- 2.5 The Divergences 108 -- 3. The War and Its Aftermath 130 -- 3.1 Introduction 130 -- 3.2 The Community in 1941 132 -- 3.3 The MIT Radiation Laboratory 136 -- 3.4 Training a New Generation of Physicists: Norman Kroll 141 -- 3.5 The Universities: 1945-1947 144 -- 3.6 The Conferences 146 -- 3.7 Physics in 1946 152 -- 4. Three Conferences: Shelter Island, Pocono, and Oldstone 156 -- 4.1 Introduction 156 -- 4.2 The Genesis of the Conferences 157 -- 4.3 The Scientific Content of the Conference 179 -- 4.4 The Later Developments 194 -- 4.5 Conclusion 205 -- 5. The Lamb Shift and the Magnetic Moment of the Electron 206 -- 5.1 Introduction 206 -- 5.2 The Experimental Situation during the 1930s 208 -- 5.3 Willis Lamb 212 -- 5.4 The Anomalous Magnetic Moment of the Electron 219 -- 5.5 The Magnetic Resonance Experiments 223 -- 5.6 Bethe's Calculation 228 -- 5.7 Relativistic Lamb Shift Calculations: 1947-1948 232 -- 5.8 The French and Weisskopf Calculation 237 -- 5.9 Radiative Correction to Scattering 245 -- 6. Tomonaga and the Rebuilding of Japanese Physics 248 -- 6.1 Introduction 248 -- 6.2 Theoretical Physics in Japan 249 -- 6.3 Tomonaga 252 -- 6.4 The War Years 260 -- 6.5 The Postwar Years 265 -- 7. Julian Schwinger and the Formalization of Quantum Field Theory 273 -- 7.1 Introduction 273 -- 7.2 The Young Schwinger 275 -- 7.3 The War Years 293 -- 7.4 Shelter Island and Its Aftermath 303 -- 7.5 The APS Meeting and the Pocono Conference 318 -- 7.6 The Michigan Summer School 335 -- 7.7 The Charles L. Mayer Nature of Light Award 340 -- 7.8 Wentzel's and Pauli's Criticism 345 -- 7.9 The Quantum Action Principle 352 -- 7.10 Philosophical Outlook 355 -- 7.11 Epilogue 367 -- 8. Richard Feynman and the Visualization of Space-Time Processes 373 -- 8.1 Background 373 -- 8.2 Undergraduate Days: MIT 374 -- 8.3 Graduate Days: Princeton 380 -- 8.4 Ph.D. Dissertation 389 -- 8.5 The War Years 397 -- 8.6 Research, 1946 405 -- 8.7 Shelter Island and Its Aftermath 411 -- 8.8 The Genesis of the Theory 414 -- 8.9 Renormalization 434 -- 8.10 The Pocono Conference: March 30-April 1, 1948 436 -- 8.11 Vacuum Polarization 445 -- 8.12 Evaluating Integrals 452 -- 8.13 The January 1949 American Physical Society Meeting 454 -- 8.14 Retrospective 457 -- 8.15 Style, Visualization, and All That 462 -- 8.16 A Postscript: Schwinger and Feynman 467 -- 9. Freeman Dyson and the Structure of Quantum Field Theory 474 -- 9.1 Family Background 474 -- 9.2 Early Education: Twyford and Winchester 476 -- 9.3 Cambridge, 1941-1943 482 -- 9.4 Bomber Command 488 -- 9.5 Imperial College and Cambridge University 490 -- 9.6 Cornell University 493 -- 9.7 The Michigan Symposium, Summer 1948 502 -- 9.8 Princeton: The Institute for Advanced Study 505 -- 9.9 The "Radiation Theories" Paper 508 -- 9.10 The Institute for Advanced Study: Oppenheimer 518 -- 9.11 The S-Matrix in QED 527 -- 9.12 The S-Matrix Paper: Retrospective 544 -- 9.13 The S-Matrix Paper: Aftermath 549 -- 9.14 Oldstone 552 -- 9.15 Return to Europe 554 -- 9.16 Heisenberg Operators 556 -- 9.17 Divergence of Perturbative Series 564 -- 9.18 Closure 566 -- 9.19 Philosophy 567 -- 9.20 Style 569 -- 9.21 Epilogue 571 -- 9.22 A Postscript: Tomonaga, Schwinger, Feynman, and Dyson 572 -- 10. QED in Switzerland 576 -- 10.1 Field Theory in Switzerland: Stueckelberg 576 -- 10.2 Quantum Field Theory in Zurich: Pauli's Seminar, 1947-1950 582 -- Epilogue: Some Reflections on Renormalization Theory 595 -- Notes and Abbreviations 606 -- Bibliography 672 -- Index 725 -- Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Quantum electrodynamics History, Physicists Biography
Analysis Electrodynamics
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [672]-723) and index
Subject Dyson, Freeman J.
Dyson, Freeman, 1923-
Feynman, Richard P. (Richard Phillips), 1918-1988.
Schwinger, Julian, 1918-1994.
Tomonaga, Shin'ichirō, 1906-1979.
Tomonaga, Shin\U+02be\ichirō, 1906-
Physicists -- Biography.
Physics -- History -- 20th century.
Quantum electrodynamics -- History.
Genre/Form Biographies.
LC no. 93033550
ISBN 0691033277 (paperback)
0691036853