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Kenneth Geddes Wilson (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase transitions—illuminating the subtle essence of phenomena like melting ice and emerging magnetism. It was embodied in his fundamental work on the renormalization group. ==Physics== His work in physics involved formulation of a comprehensive theory of scaling: how fundamental properties and forces of a system vary depending on the scale over which they are measured. He devised a universal "divide-and-conquer" strategy for calculating how phase transitions occur, by considering each scale separately and then abstracting the connection between contiguous ones, in a novel appreciation of renormalization group theory. This provided profound insights into the field of critical phenomena and phase transitions in statistical physics enabling exact calculations.〔Wilson, K. G. and M. Fisher, ''Critical exponents in 3.99 dimensions'', Physical Review Letters, 28, 1972, p. 240〕 One example of an important problem in solid-state physics he solved using renormalization is in quantitatively describing the Kondo effect. He then extended these insights on scaling to answer fundamental questions on the nature of quantum field theory and the operator product expansion〔Wilson, K. G. ''Non-lagrangian models in current algebra'' Physical Review, 179, 1969, p. 1499–1512 ; ''Model of coupling constant renormalisation'', Physical Review D, 2, 1970, p. 1438–1472; Wilson, K. G., ''Operator product expansions and anomalous dimensions in Thirring model'', ibid., p. 1473–77; ''Anomalous dimensions and breakdown of scale invariance in perturbation theory'', ibid. p. 1478–93; ; 〕 and the physical meaning of the renormalization group.〔Wilson, K. G.:''Problems in physics with many scales of length'', Scientific American, ( August 1979 )〕 He also pioneered our understanding of the confinement of quarks inside hadrons, utilizing lattice gauge theory, and initiating an approach permitting formerly foreboding strong-coupling calculations on computers. On such a lattice, he further shed light on chiral symmetry, a crucial feature of elementary particle interactions. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kenneth G. Wilson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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