Franz Wegner

Franz Joachim Wegner (born 15 June 1940) is emeritus professor for theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg.

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Education

Franz Wegner attained a doctorate in 1968 with thesis advisor Wilhelm Brenig at the Technical University Munich with the thesis, "Zum Heisenberg-Modell im paramagnetischen Bereich und am kritischen Punkt" ("On the Heisenberg-model within the paramagnetic range and at the critical point “).

Subsequently, he did research with a post-doctoral position at Forschungszentrum Jülich, in the group of Herbert Wagner and at Brown University with Leo Kadanoff.[1] Since 1974 he is a professor at Heidelberg.[2]

Research

The emphasis of his scientific work is statistical physics, in particular the theory of phase transitions and the theory of group renormalization.[3][4] The eponymous "Wegner exponent“ is of fundamental importance for the purpose of describing corrections to asymptotic scale invariance in close proximity to phase transitions. Wegner also "invented" the foundational lattice gauge theoretical models. The method developed from Wegner's foundational work is nowadays intensively used in simulations of quantum chromodynamics.

Accolades

Wegner won the Walter Schottky prize in 1976 for his work on phase transitions and elementary particles.[2] He has also been elected to the Heidelberger Academy of Sciences and won the Max Planck medal among other awards and recognitions.

Selected works of Wegner

Reprinted in Claudio Rebbi (ed.), Lattice Gauge Theories and Monte Carlo Simulations, World Scientific, Singapore (1983), p. 60-73. Abstract: [1]

See also

References

  1. ^ Kadanoff, L. P.; Wegner, F. J. (1971). "Some Critical Properties of the Eight-Vertex Model". Phys. Rev. B 4: 3989–93. Bibcode 1971PhRvB...4.3989K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.4.3989. 
  2. ^ a b "German Physical Society gives theoretical‐physics awards", Physics Today 29 (9): 69, 1976, doi:10.1063/1.3023914 .
  3. ^ Kadanoff, Leo P. (1999), From order to chaos II: essays, critical, chaotic, and otherwise, Series on Nonlinear Science, 32, World Scientific, p. 161, ISBN 9789810234348, http://books.google.com/books?id=uFsnv27G5M8C&pg=PA161 .
  4. ^ Cao, Tian Yu (2004), Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge University Press, p. 93, ISBN 9780521602723, http://books.google.com/books?id=d0wS0EJHZ3MC&pg=PA93 .

External links