Kenneth G. Wilson

Infobox Scientist
name = Kenneth Geddes Wilson
box_width =


imagesize =180px
caption = Kenneth Geddes Wilson
birth_date = June 8, 1936
nationality = United States
ethnicity =
field = Theoretical physics
work_institutions = Cornell University
alma_mater = Caltech
doctoral_advisor = Murray Gell-Mann
doctoral_students = Roman Jackiw Steve Shenker Michael Peskin
known_for = phase transitions
prizes = Wolf Prize in physics in 1980 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics Kenneth Geddes Wilson (born June 8, 1936) is an American theoretical physicist.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a Putnam Fellow. He earned his PhD from Caltech in 1961, studying under Murray Gell-Mann.

He joined Cornell University in 1963 in the Department of Physics as a junior faculty member, becoming a full professor in 1970. In 1974, he became the James A. Weeks Professor of Physics at Cornell. He was a co-winner of the Wolf Prize in physics in 1980, together with Michael E. Fisher and Leo Kadanoff. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing a theory of second-order phase transitions in matter that accounts for effects on neighboring molecules.

An even more important insight was Wilson's answer to the question: "What is quantum field theory?" Wilson developed the philosophy and techniques of renormalization group.

In 1985, he was appointed as Cornell's Director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (known now as the Cornell Theory Center, one of five national supercomputer center created by the National Science Foundation. Since 1988, Dr. Wilson has been a faculty member at the Ohio State University. His current research interests include physics education research.

His important PhD students include Roman Jackiw, Steve Shenker, and Michael Peskin.

Wilson's father was the prominent chemist E. Bright Wilson, and his brother David is also a Professor at Cornell in the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.

Awards

*Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1973
*Boltzmann Medal, 1975
*Wolf Prize, 1980
*Harvard University, D.Sc (Hon.), 1981
*Caltech, Distinguished Alumni Award, 1981
*Franklin Medal, 1982
*Nobel Prize for Physics, 1982
*A.C. Eringen Medal, 1984
*Aneesur Rahman Prize, 1993

Literature

*Wilson, K. G.:"Problems in physics with many scales of length", Scientific American, August 1979
*the same:"The Renormalization group (RG) and critical phenomena 1", Physical Review B, volume 4, 1971, p.3174
*the same: "The renormalization group: critical phenomena and the Kondo problem", Reviews of modern physics, 47, 1975, p.773-839
*the same, and M. Fisher: "Critical exponents in 3.99 dimensions", Physical Review Letters, 28, 1972, p.240
*the same: "Non-lagrangian models in current algebra" Physical Review, 179, 1969, p.1499-1512 (operator product expansion)
*the same: "Model of coupling constant renormalisation", Physical Review D, 2, 1970, p. 1438-1472
*the same: "Operator product expansions and anomalous dimensions in Thirring model", ibid., p.1473-77
*the same: "Anomalous dimensions and breakdown of scale invariance in perturbation theory", ibid. p.1478-93
*the same: "RG and strong interactions" Physical Review D, 3, 1971, p.1818-46
*the same: "Confinement of quarks", Physical Review D, 10, 1974, p.2445-59

See also

* Wilson loop

External links

* [http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/kenneth_geddes_wilson.html Kenneth G. Wilson]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070703053459/http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kgw/kgw.html Kenneth G. Wilson's Homepage (on Archive, the original at Ohio State University no longer exists)]
* [http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/briefcvs/wilson_briefcv.pdf Kenneth G. Wilson's brief CV, from Ohio State University (PDF file)]
* [http://arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/au:+Wilson_K/0/1/0/all/0/1] Publications on ArXiv
* [http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1982/index.html Nobel Lecture]
*MathGenealogy|id=22937