Arthur Strong Wightman (March 30, 1922 – January 13, 2013) was an American mathematical physicist. He was one of the founders of the axiomatic approach to quantum field theory, and originated the set of Wightman axioms.[1] With his rigorous treatment of quantum field theories, he promoted research on various aspects of modern mathematical physics.[2]
Wightman has been married twice. His first wife, Anna-Greta Larsson, was an artist and photographer and died early. They had a daughter, Robin, who also died prematurely. The second wife was the Bulgarian translator Ludmilla Popova Wightman. Wightman died on January 13, 2013, in Princeton, in New Jersey.[7]
Scientific career
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Already during his undergraduate studies, Arthur Wightman had close contacts with the mathematics department in Princeton. Together with the mathematician John Tate, Wightman was engaged in the work on the Lorentz and Poincaré groups representations.[8]
In the 1950s, he introduced his Wightman axioms as a mathematical foundation to relativistic quantum field theory. Quantum fields are treated as distributions in space-time. The Hilbert space carries a unitary representation of the Poincaré group under which the field operators transform covariantly. Wightman's paper with D. Hall reported to a theorem that stated that the expectation value of the product of two fields, , could be analytically continued to all separations .[9]: 425 Using this, Res Jost was able to derive the PCT and the spin-statistics theorems, as shown in Wightman's and Streater's book.[10] Together with Eugene Wigner and Gian-Carlo Wick, he introduced superselection rules and studied the representations of commutator and anti-commutator algebras with the mathematician Lars Gårding.[11]
Streater, Raymond F.; Wightman, Arthur S. (1989). PCT, spin and statistics, and all that. ISBN 978-0691070629.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1956). "Quantum Field Theory in Terms of Vacuum Expectation Values". Physical Review. 101 (2): 860–866. Bibcode:1956PhRv..101..860W. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.101.860.
Wightman, Arthur S.; Gårding, Lars (1965). "Fields as operator-valued distributions in relativistic quantum theory". Arkiv för Fysik. 28.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1969). "What is the point of so-called axiomatic field theory?". Physics Today. 22 (9): 53–58. Bibcode:1969PhT....22i..53W. doi:10.1063/1.3035782.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1967). Introduction to some aspects of the relativistic dynamics of quantized fields, Cargese Lectures in Theoretical Physics. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1977). "Should We Believe in Quantum Field Theory?". 15th Erice School of Subnuclear Physics: The Why's of Subnuclear Physics. pp. 983–1025.
Wick, Gian Carlo; Wightman, Arthur S.; Wigner, Eugene P. (1952). "The intrinsic parity of elementary particles". Physical Review. 88 (1): 101–105. Bibcode:1952PhRv...88..101W. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.88.101.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1981). "Looking back at quantum field theory". Physica Scripta. 24 (5): 813–816. doi:10.1088/0031-8949/24/5/001.
Jaffe, Arthur; Wightman, Arthur S.; Jost, Res (1990). "For Res Jost, and To Arthur Wightman". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 132 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1007/BF02277996.
Wightman, Arthur S. (1989). "The theory of quantized fields in the 50s". Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 50s. 50: 255–261.
^ abKelly, Morgan (January 30, 2013). "Princeton University - Esteemed Princeton mathematical physicist and mentor Arthur Wightman dies". Princeton.edu. Retrieved February 13, 2013.
^ ab"Wightman's Henri Poincaré Prize citation". International Association of Mathematical Physics. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^The doctoral thesis is Wightman, Arthur (1949). The Moderation and Absorption of Negative Pions in Hydrogen (Thesis). Princeton. Bibcode:1949PhDT........16W.
^Simon, Barry, ed. (March 2015). "In Memory of Arthur Strong Wightman" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 62 (3): 249–257. doi:10.1090/noti1219.
^"Biography from the APS". aip.org. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015.
^Jaffe, Arthur; Simon, Barry (January 2013). "Arthur Strong Wightman (1922–2013)" (PDF). News Bulletin, International Association of Mathematical Physics: 34–36.
^Jaffe, Arthur; Wightman, Arthur S.; Jost, Res (1990). "For Res Jost, and To Arthur Wightman". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 132 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1007/BF02277996.
^Duck, Ian; Sudarshan, Ennackel Chandy George; Sudarshan, E. C. G. (1998). Pauli and the spin-statistics theorem (1. reprint ed.). Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-02-3114-9.
^Streater, Raymond F.; Wightman, Arthur S. (1989). PCT, spin and statistics, and all that. ISBN 978-0691070629.
^Streater, Ray. "Table of contents, Streater, Wightman PCT, Spin, Statistics and all that". mth.kcl.ac.uk. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012.
^"1969 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Recipient". American Physical Society. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^"Henri Poincaré Prize winners". International Association of Mathematical Physics. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^"APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^"American Academy of Arts and Sciences member page of Arthur Wightman". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^"National Academy of Sciences member page of Arthur Wightman". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
^"International Congress of Mathematicians. List of Members, Stockholm 1962" (PDF). International Mathematical Union. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
^"Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectures". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
Further reading
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Simon, Barry, ed. (March 2015). "In Memory of Arthur Strong Wightman" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 62 (3): 249–257. doi:10.1090/noti1219.
Kelly, Morgan (January 30, 2013). "Esteemed Princeton mathematical physicist and mentor Arthur Wightman dies". Princeton University. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
Jaffe, Arthur; Simon, Barry (January 2013). "Arthur Strong Wightman (1922–2013)" (PDF). News Bulletin, International Association of Mathematical Physics: 34–36.
External links
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