Kenneth G. Wilson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kenneth Geddes Wilson | |
 Kenneth Geddes Wilson
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| Born | June 8, 1936 |
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| Nationality | American |
| Fields | theoretical physics |
| Institutions | Cornell University |
| Alma mater | Caltech |
| Doctoral advisor | Murray Gell-Mann |
| Doctoral students | Roman Jackiw Steve Shenker Michael Peskin |
| Known for | phase transitions |
| Notable awards | 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 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.
[edit] 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
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Kenneth G. Wilson
- Kenneth G. Wilson's Homepage (on Archive, the original at Ohio State University no longer exists)
- Kenneth G. Wilson's brief CV, from Ohio State University (PDF file)
- [1] Publications on ArXiv
- Nobel Lecture
- Kenneth G. Wilson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
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