QED and the Men Who Made It 1st Edition by Silvan S. Schweber (PDF)

Description

In the 1930s, physics was in a crisis. There appeared to be no way to reconcile the new theory of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Several approaches had been tried and had failed. In the post-World War II period, four eminent physicists rose to the challenge and developed a calculable version of quantum electrodynamics (QED), probably the most successful theory in physics. This formulation of QED was pioneered by Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, three of whom won the Nobel Prize for their work. In this book, physicist and historian Silvan Schweber tells the story of these four physicists, blending discussions of their scientific work with fascinating biographical sketches. Setting the achievements of these four men in context, Schweber begins with an account of the early work done by physicists such as Dirac and Jordan, and describes the gathering of eminent theorists at Shelter Island in 1947, the meeting that heralded the new era of QED. The rest of his narrative comprises individual biographies of the four physicists, discussions of their major contributions, and the story of the scientific community in which they worked. Throughout, Schweber draws on his technical expertise to offer a lively and lucid explanation of how this theory was finally established as the appropriate way to describe the atomic and subatomic realms.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “A remarkable and exciting book. . . . Schweber brings to his efforts the tools of the professional historian . . . and the tools of a professional physicist who has himself worked on QED, a field as highly technical and abstruse as it is important.” ― Science About the Author Silvan S. Schweber is Professor of Physics and Richard Koret Professor of the History of Ideas at Brandeis University. He is also an associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐For some reason there are two Chapter 2s in my book? That’s a solid misprint or mis-organization. The content is great just a little disappointed in my book.

⭐I am still reading it. I would suggest before buying this book one should read “QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter” by Richard Feynman. The author Silvan Schweber has done a good job of presenting the history of QED through the work of Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga. He provides the reader a short biography of each one and then explores their contribution to the evolution of QED in terms of the physics they did. Although I have a degree in mathematics, I found the mathematics in the book quite challenging. However, one can still get conceptual picture of the development of quantum electrodynamics through this book without a strong math background. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants to get a better understanding of the often weird quantum world.Stephen Spears

⭐While this is meant to be a historical account of the development of QED, it turns out to be much more than that. The actual physics described in the book – is well explained – and is typically viewed from the eyes of originator(s) of the theory. For e.g. how Dirac came up with the formulation of the relativistic wave equation or how Feynman originated his famous diagrams. That type of ‘how did the theory’s originator derive this..’ provides a deeper understanding of the physics – than just reading the equation(s) in a textbook.

⭐This is an excellent book for the history of QED. Even though there are some mathematical physics equations, the reader can skip them without losing the essence of the book, which, in my opinion, is the complete presentation of the characters involved and the scientific background that finally led to the most successful physics theory. Worth reading till the last page.

⭐The volume is physically impeccable, and the content is well organized and informative, just what I was looking for.Lucid and competent technical explanations suitable for a well informed, general reader. The history is fascinating as we all know.Sam Schweber has done a great job of an intriguing story.Thank you, Verena Huber-Dyson

⭐A very detailed description of the development of quantum electrodynamics. Would be better if it contains some more material about Tomonaga.

⭐The world said goodbye to Freeman Dyson February 28, 2020. Silvan Schweber (who passed away May 14, 2017) had this to say regarding Dyson: “Dyson should have shared the Nobel Prize.” (page 575). That is a statement with which I would have to agree. It should be immediately recognized that a one-volume attempt to expound on the works of Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga is going to prove inadequate. Silvan Schweber proves to be no exception to that. Omitting his notes and bibliography, this book devotes 600 pages to the work of those four physicists. Were this an equitable distribution, that would come to 150 pages per physicist. However, equitable is not what the reader will find. Another reviewer has already pointed out that Tomonaga is in no sense given equal weight. Let us rectify that:(1) The journal Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement has open access articles for download, celebrating the achievements of Tomonaga (volume 105, 1991). If you desire more, there are other options: his illuminating book, “Story of Spin” is readily available and his multi-volume text of quantum mechanics can sometimes be located. Also, Tomonaga’s Nobel Prize lecture is available to read online (along with Feynman and Schwinger).(2) Return to Freeman Dyson. Schweber begins his biographical sketch of Dyson on page 474 (chapter nine). We read of Dyson compliment to Tomonaga: “his papers demystified relativistic quantum field theory.” (page 501). Schweber makes reference to Dyson’s 1954 lectures on renormalization (page 529). These Les Houches lectures on renormalization can be located on the University of Texas (Austin) website. Dyson’s paper “The renormalization method in quantum electrodynamics” (1951) is open access on the Royal Society website. Read: “Dyson’s way of thinking is analytical and in his papers graphs were not drawn explicitly.” (page 514). Interestingly enough, Dyson says: “I felt that Feynman path integrals were an intuitive guide, they weren’t anything one could use. At that time I never found a way that I could make real use of path integrals.” (page 565). That is a remarkable statement from a physicist who began his career as mathematician (“passion for analysis,” page 479) and that statement cries out for amplification.(3) Feynman and Schwinger are well documented here, plus their respective technical biographies (The Beat of a Different Drum and Climbing the Mountain). Better to avail yourself of their respective “collected papers,” from World Scientific Publishers. This work is a well-trod area, so I devote no more space to that. Schweber reminds us that Feynman and Schwinger were both perfectionists and independent (page 469).(4) An unsung hero is found in the tragic ECG Stueckelberg (chapter: qed in Switzerland). What is here is brief, so one needs other sources: the Swiss Physical Society has more information. We read: “Stueckelberg was a brilliant, eccentric and difficult individual who became afflicted with a mental illness that required increasingly frequent hospitalization.” (page 576).(5) Schweber’s 60-pages of endnotes and his 50-page bibliography are rich sources of further material. Many of these resources (bibliography) can be located on the web. The index is six-pages, which is probably inadequate (it does not distinguish topics from names, which I find less than inviting).(6) Let us take stock: This is, at times, a rather technical book and you will not get a popularization of the physics here expounded (that is a pity). A casual reader might get the incorrect impression that physics and mathematics are identical enterprises (that is a pity). We read: “ Tomonaga thought that the reason that quantum field theory was so unsatisfactory was that it had been built up in a way much too analogous to non- relativistic quantum mechanics.” (page 261). If you are not familiar with quantum mechanics, you will not understand that sentiment. Read: “Dyson believed QED was incomplete, but not incorrect.” (page 554). For a casual reader that sentiment will also need amplification. Schweber proceeds apace through a litany of journal papers, equation after equation. The problem with that approach is that you can not see the forest through the trees. Physicist Willis Lamb (here: pages 212-219) deserves a separate book of his own. Happily, you can hear him give quantum mechanics lectures in 1982 and 1985 (audio lectures at www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org). Also, the American Institute of Physics has a transcript of a 1985 interview with Lamb posted online.(7) Concluding: I have barely scratched the surface of Schweber’s voluminous account. My only quibble is that there is too much to absorb. Each page of this discourse can be amplified beyond all expectation. Reiterating: The casual reader is unable to discern the forest for the trees, as the details are overwhelming. Silvan Schweber began his career as a physicist, so one can forgive heavy- reliance on technical details (study a copy of his 900-page textbook Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, it is collateral reading and well-worth the effort).Schweber writes: “it is the identification of the different styles of reasoning that is, I believe, the important task for the intellectual historian attempting to relate that history.” (preface). What the reader discovers, more than all else, is the “different styles of reasoning” employed by Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga. But, one may simply choose to discover those “different styles of reasoning” by perusing the various papers of those respective physicists. However, Schweber is a thorough-going beginning.

⭐Important book, but first part of least has too many typos in the equations!I have realized that the virtual photons really play an important role in the quantization of the Maxwell field – not surprising.Specifically p.p.39-40-41the problem in the 1929 Heisenberg Pauli Feb & Sept papers “On the quantum dynamics of wave fields” that the conjugate momentum time like component vanished making a contradiction with the commutation rules. However, that was only for on-light-cone real photons, adding the off-light cone virtual photons where AI^,I =/= 0 solves the problem, no need for Heisenberg to take “epsilon” to zero on p.41.[…]Remember it’s the virtual photons et-al that anti-gravitate as dark energy, and it’s the virtual electron-positron pairs et-al that gravitate as dark matter.

⭐[updated 1/10/2014]This book is a very significant contribution to the history of fundamental physics in the 20th century.It is very well researched and the narrative makes excellent reading, providing many insights into the development of the theory. Silvan Schweber successfully ties together the complex story of QED, from Heisenberg and Pauli’s first steps towards a quantised theory of fields; through Dirac’s game-changing formulation of the relativistic electron field and prediction of anti-matter; via the decisive experimental inputs of Lamb, Rabi, Nafe and Nelson; on to Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga’s independent and startlingly contrasting formulations of QED itself; finally to the profound work of Freeman Dyson in seeing the mathematical equivalence of the different formulations, thus providing the proof of QED’s renormalisability to all orders. It is sadly ironic (as the author notes) that Dyson, who probably understood QED better than any of its three principal authors, was the only one not to receive the Nobel Prize for his contribution!The book is full of revealing historical gems. My favourite is the mini-biography of Dirac, with its illumination of Dirac’s opinion of Bohr’s views on Quantum Theory …. (p 17) In 1925 Bohr gave lectures at Cambridge which Dirac attended. Considering the possibility that Bohr’s thoughts might have influenced Dirac’s soon-to-be-published work on relativistic quantum mechanics, the author notes that Dirac’s (1977) reaction to Bohr was mixed: “While I [Dirac] was very much impressed by [Bohr], his arguments were mainly of a qualitative nature, and I was not able to really pinpoint the facts behind them. What I wanted was statements which could be expressed in terms of equations, and Bohr’s work very seldom provided such statements. I am not really sure how much my later work was influenced by these lectures of Bohr”. Which was, of course, a polite way of saying the lectures had no influence at all on his later work! A close second is the description of the Shelter Island conference, with its summary of the proposed agenda for the “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics” session, as suggested by the three ‘discussion leaders’; Kramers, Weisskopf and Oppenheimer. Weisskopf’s outline of topics for discussion is characteristically broad, inclusive and relevant, spanning the Difficulties of QED, Nuclear and Meson phenomena and forces, High energy physics and Proposed Experiments. By contrast Oppenheimer’s proposed agenda is almost embarrassingly myopic in its singular concentration on Cosmic-ray physics (Oppenheimer’s own research area at the time) to the complete exclusion of all else! [2] Another gem is in the description of Dyson’s work where Schweber informs us that ‘ Dyson pointed out that in Feynman’s theory “the graph corresponding to a particular matrix element is regarded, not merely as an aid to calculation [4], but as a picture of the physical process which gives rise to that matrix element” ‘.Schweber’s book contains numerous similarly revealing, entertaining and enlightening passages, so that I enjoyed it very much indeed and, when also considering the historical and technical breadth and depth of his research, it would certainly merit 5 stars. However, and unfortunately, there are three areas where the book certainly falls below that standard;First – the writing appears to be littered with transcription errors [1] that render many of the mathematical equations meaningless. Given that the author is attempting to write a “Scientific” biography of these physicists and their work it is a great pity that more care was not taken in the technical proof reading!Second – there are passages where the author’s attempts at explanation, for the scientifically and mathematically literate but QED-non-specialist, are frustratingly opaque. This fault is at its most glaring in the passage starting on page 513, where the author attempts to paraphrase Dyson’s proof, of the equivalence of Schwinger & Tomonaga’s formulation to that of Feynman … ‘ The derivation of these rules “from what is fundamentally the Schwinger-Tomonaga theory ….” ‘ , by cutting and pasting extracts from Dyson’s paper. The result is a completely incomprehensible melange of undefined mathematical notation and commentary! I re-read it several times before finally resorting in desperation to Dyson’s original, which I had never read, but which was instantly clear and coherent by comparison! [3]Third – and most importantly, the book is very seriously unbalanced by the minimalist account of San-Itiro Tomonaga and his work. Schweber devotes 100 pages each to Schwinger, Feynman and Dyson, but a miserly 25 pages to the Japanese physicist. This is a fundamental flaw in the book, notwithstanding Schweber’s apparently sincere apologies for this imbalance in the Preface. But those apologies are, to a large extent, undermined by a number of remarks in the book, culminating in the Postscript on page 572: “Without minimising in any way Tomonaga’s accomplishments, it seems to me that the developments in the period from 1947 to 1950 would not have been substantially different without him …” !! This may well be true, but would certainly have been better left unsaid, because *exactly* the same could be said of Julian Schwinger’s contribution! Had Schwinger and Tomonaga’s brains (and linguistic abilities) been switched in 1947, QED would probably have evolved in much the same way. In fact there is a potentially convincing argument that, had Tomonaga been in Schwinger’s position, the development and wider understanding of QED would have advanced more rapidly because of Tomonaga’s inclusive, pragmatic and explanatory style, which contrasted sharply with the exclusive and abstract mathematical exhibitionism of Schwinger! This third and most serious fault in the book would, by itself, merit the reduction from 5 stars to 3.============[1] A number of errors are caused by confusion of three characters that, when (poorly) handwritten, can be easily mistaken for each other, particularly if the person who was transcribing from Schweber’s notes was not familiar with the normal conventions of physics notation. The characters are;Lower case ‘v’ and the lower case Greek letters ‘nu’ and ‘gamma’. Equations affected are on p 10 (for the average energy in a black-body radiation field, where ‘volume v’ and ‘frequency nu’ are confused) and on page 32 (for Dirac’s prior derivation of the so-called Breit-Wigner distribution, where ‘frequency nu’ and ‘spectral line-width gamma’ are confused). There may well be others but I did not check the details beyond the first 100 pages.[2] Read the biography

⭐Inside The Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer

⭐for supporting evidence on the strange and unbalanced character of JRO.[3] You can find a (pirate) copy of the original here : See section 6 “Calculation of Matrix Elements” starting on page 14.[4] As was the case in Schwinger’s formulation.

⭐I like to TRY to understand QED and related issues from the 70-80s. before strings tangled things up. THe stories of the main people, with their lives and work in chronological order is explained well in this book. (essepecially where they cross-over and meet at conferences) . Equations appear in the stories at the point where they were thought up by these people. I could not follow them for very long in this book as I do not have the mathematical skill. Skipping these parts rather misses a lot for me. I highly recommend as this book is a real challenge and is NOT dumbed down like most ‘popular science ‘ books . The reader can skip some math, but I recommend trying to read at lease some of it. I would admire any reader who understands most of it. As ‘strings’ are going nowhere, and LIE-8 groups are coming back, this gives a great pre-read on how mathematicians came to theories that could be verified the last time this happened in Physics.Things like renomalization and guage theories would really need to be understood before diving into this book deeply. I end up with an understanding that QED et all. are a LOT more complicated than the ‘popular scientist’ books and protagonists would like to portray. Very good book. I am not good enough at maths to be able to spot errors etc.AN explanation of the symbology of each section would have helped and get a wider audience.Martin Macrae

⭐Everything one wants to know on how our civilization succeeded through science to interpret and master the laws of how nature exhibits herself to us. The scientific history of Quantum Electrodynamics from inside with every possible detail .

⭐Excellent copy and service. It arrived earlier! Thanks so much!

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