Schwinger, Julian Seymour (1918–1994)

US quantum physicist. His research concerned the behaviour of charged particles in electrical fields. This work, expressed entirely through mathematics, combines elements from quantum theory and relativity theory into a new theory called quantum electrodynamics, the most accurate physical theory of all time. Schwinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 for his development of the basic principles of quantum electrodynamics. He shared the award with Richard Feynman and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.

Described as the ‘physicist in knee pants’, he entered college in New York at the age of 15, transferred to Columbia University and graduated at 17. At the age of 29 he became Harvard University's youngest full professor. He went to work on nuclear physics problems at Berkeley (in association with J Robert Oppenheimer) and at Purdue University. From 1943 to 1945 he worked on problems relating to radar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, after the war, moved to Harvard, where he developed his version of quantum electrodynamics. He calculated the electron's anomalous magnetic moment respectively soon after its discovery. In 1957, Schwinger anticipated the existence of two different neutrinos associated with the electron and the muon, which was confirmed experimentally in 1963. He also speculated that weak nuclear forces are carried by massive, charged particles. This was confirmed in 1983 at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Geneva. In 1972 Schwinger became professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.