Resources This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.
Related Categories
|
|
|
Climbing the Mountain
The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger
Jagdish Mehra and Kimball Milton
690 pages
|
halftone frontispiece & 16pp halftones
|
234x156mm
978-0-19-852745-9
|
Paperback
|
14 August 2003
|
|
This item is printed to order and supplied on a firm sale basis. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
|
|
|
- First full-length biography of Julian Schwinger
- Biography on one of the most important and influential scientists of the 20th century
- Provides unique and illuminating insight into Schwinger's life and work
- Reveals much of the work underlying modern physics
- Written by the acclaimed biographer of Richard Feynman
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 universally recognized 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. He developed 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 private and gentle genius.Readership: Physicists, in particular theoretical physicists; historians and philosophers of science.
|
|
|
Jagdish Mehra and Kimball Milton, Department of Physics, University of Oklahoma
|
|
|
Review(s) from previous edition
"... a through and comprehensive account of Schwinger's life and work... a valuable testament to the life and legacy of Julian Schwinger - Lowell Brown, Physics World
"... the first full-length biography of Julian Schwinger ... scholarly and well done. The influence of Julian Schwinger on the physics of his time has been profound.
" - Robert Finkelstein, CERN Courier
"Mehra and Milton provide a great deal of material from interviews and archival files and thus help give us a fuller picture of Schwinger. Perhaps their most important contribution is their account of the evolution of many of Schwinger's thoughts. [...] It does shed light on a many-faceted genius." - Tian Yu Cao, Physics Today
|
|
|
Preface
1: A New York City Childhood
2: Julian Schwinger at Columbia University
3: Schwinger Goes to Berkeley
4: During the Second World War
5: Winding up at the Radiation Lab, Going to Harvard, and Marriage
6: The Development of Quantum Electrodynamics Until 1947: The Historical Background of Julian Schwinger's Work on QED
7: Quantum Electrodynamics and Julian Schwinger's Path to Fame
8: Schwinger, Tomonaga, Feymann, and Dyson: The Triumph of Renormalization
9: Green's Functions and the Dynamical Action Principle
10: The World According to Stern and Gerlach
11: Custodian of Quantum Field Theory
12: Electroweak Unification and Foreshadowing of the Standard Model
13: The Nobel Prize and the Last Years at Harvard
14: Move to UCLA and Continuing Concerns
15: Taking the Road Less Travelled By
16: Diversions of a Gentle Genius
Appendix A: Julian Schwinger - List of Publications
Appendix B: Ph.D. Students of Julian Schwinger
Index
|
|
|
|
Recently Viewed
|
|
|
Applying action theory to psychiatry
Lennart Nordenfelt
£39.99 £9.99
Please note, this offer price only applies to individual customers when ordering direct from Oxford University Press, while stock lasts. No further discounts will apply. If you are a bookseller, please contact your OUP sales representative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jacqueline Mariña
£74.00
|
|
|
|
|
Edmund T. Rolls
£39.99
|
|
|
|
|
The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
|
|
