Julian Schwinger

Julian Seymour Schwinger (February 12, 1918 -- July 16, 1994) was an American theoretical physicist. He formulated the theory of renormalization and posited a phenomenon of electron-positron pairs known as the Schwinger effect. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics (QED), along with Richard Feynman and Shinichiro Tomonaga. Schwinger was born in New York City where he attended Townsend Harris High School and then the City College of New York as an undergraduate before transferring to Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1936 and his Ph.D. (overseen by I.I. Rabi) in 1939. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley (under J. Robert Oppenheimer) and was later appointed to a position at Purdue University. During World War II Schwinger worked at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, providing theoretical support for the development of radar. He tried applying his knowledge as a Nuclear Physicist to... full article at wikipedia