Murray Gell-Mann was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. He played key roles in developing the concept of chirality in the theory of the weak interactions and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the strong interactions, which controls the physics of the light mesons. In the 1970s he was a co-inventor of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which explains the confinement of quarks in mesons and baryons and forms a large part of the Standard Model of elementary particles and forces.
A timeline of atomic and subatomic physics, including particle physics.
Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist and writer known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.
In physics, an effective field theory is a type of approximation, or effective theory, for an underlying physical theory, such as a quantum field theory or a statistical mechanics model. An effective field theory includes the appropriate degrees of freedom to describe physical phenomena occurring at a chosen length scale or energy scale, while ignoring substructure and degrees of freedom at shorter distances. Intuitively, one averages over the behavior of the underlying theory at shorter length scales to derive what is hoped to be a simplified model at longer length scales. Effective field theories typically work best when there is a large separation between length scale of interest and the length scale of the underlying dynamics. Effective field theories have found use in particle physics, statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, general relativity, and hydrodynamics. They simplify calculations, and allow treatment of dissipation and radiation effects.
Mark Brian Wise is a Canadian-American theoretical physicist. He has conducted research in elementary particle physics and cosmology. He is best known for his role in the development of heavy quark effective theory (HQET), a mathematical formalism that has allowed physicists to make predictions about otherwise intractable problems in the theory of the strong nuclear interactions. He has also published work on mathematical models for finance and risk assessment.
In particle physics, the history of quantum field theory starts with its creation by Paul Dirac, when he attempted to quantize the electromagnetic field in the late 1920s. Major advances in the theory were made in the 1940s and 1950s, leading to the introduction of renormalized quantum electrodynamics (QED). The field theory behind QED was so accurate and successful in predictions that efforts were made to apply the same basic concepts for the other forces of nature. Beginning in 1954, the parallel was found by way of gauge theory, leading by the late 1970s, to quantum field models of strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force, united in the modern Standard Model of particle physics.
In relativistic quantum mechanics, the Klein paradox is a quantum phenomenon related to particles encountering high-energy potential barriers. It is named after physicist Oskar Klein who discovered in 1929. Originally, Klein obtained a paradoxical result by applying the Dirac equation to the familiar problem of electron scattering from a potential barrier. In nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, electron tunneling into a barrier is observed, with exponential damping. However, Klein's result showed that if the potential is at least of the order of the electron mass , the barrier is nearly transparent. Moreover, as the potential approaches infinity, the reflection diminishes and the electron is always transmitted.
Dmitri Dmitrievich Ivanenko was a Soviet theoretical physicist of Ukrainian origin who made great contributions to the physical science of the twentieth century, especially to nuclear physics, field theory, and gravitation theory. He worked in the Poltava Gravimetric Observatory of the Institute of Geophysics of NAS of Ukraine, was the head of the Theoretical Department Ukrainian Physico-Technical Institute in Kharkiv, Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Kharkiv Institute of Mechanical Engineering. Professor of University of Kharkiv, Professor of Moscow State University.
Asım Orhan Barut was a Turkish-American theoretical physicist.
Alexey Andreevich Anselm was a Russian theoretical physicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, professor, director (1992–1994) of the B.P. Konstantinov Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), member of: the Russian and American Physical Society, the executive committee of the Nuclear Physics Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the editorial board of the Russian journal “Yadernaya Fizika”.
Øyvind Grøn is a Norwegian physicist.
Alexandru Proca was a Romanian physicist who studied and worked in France. He developed the vector meson theory of nuclear forces and the relativistic quantum field equations that bear his name for the massive, vector spin-1 mesons.
James Daniel "BJ" Bjorken was an American theoretical physicist. He was a Putnam Fellow in 1954, received a BS in physics from MIT in 1956, and obtained his PhD from Stanford University in 1959. Bjorken was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 1962. He was also emeritus professor in the SLAC Theory Group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and was a member of the Theory Department of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (1979–1989).
Hugh David Politzer is an American theoretical physicist and the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics with David Gross and Frank Wilczek for their discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics.
Christof Wetterich is a German theoretical physicist.
Anatoly Alekseyevich Logunov was a Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Bogolyubov Prize in 1996.
Jon Magne Leinaas is a Norwegian theoretical physicist.
Roger Frederick Dashen was an American theoretical physicist who studied particle physics and quantum field theory.
Kenneth Alan Johnson was an American theoretical physicist. He was professor of physics at MIT, a leader in the study of quantum field theories and the quark substructure of matter. Johnson contributed to the understanding of symmetry and anomalies in quantum field theories and to models of quark confinement and dynamics in quantum chromodynamics.
Arthur Kent Kerman was a Canadian-American nuclear physicist, a fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was a professor emeritus of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) and Laboratory for Nuclear Science He was known for his work on the theory of the structure of nuclei and on the theory of nuclear reactions.
