Martinus J. G. Veltman
1931–2021, Waalwijk, Netherlands, Bilthoven, Netherlands
Dutch theoretical physicist, mentor of 't Hooft; he developed the SCHOONSCHIP computer program and laid the groundwork for the renormalization of electroweak theory.
Veltman studied mathematics and physics at Utrecht, earned his PhD in 1963, then worked at CERN and SLAC before returning to Utrecht as professor in 1966. He pioneered the use of computers for field-theory algebra: his program SCHOONSCHIP (from 1963) was among the first computer-algebra systems.
With 't Hooft he developed dimensional regularization and proved the renormalizability of spontaneously broken gauge theory, which allowed predicting the W and Z masses. He moved to the University of Michigan in 1981. Teacher and student shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Nobel-winning work
Veltman had seen since the late 1960s that Yang–Mills theory could describe the weak interaction, but its quantum calculations were enormously complex and riddled with apparent infinities. He wrote SCHOONSCHIP to manipulate millions of algebraic terms, and in 1972 introduced with 't Hooft dimensional regularization — continuing loop integrals to non-integer dimensions to tame divergences while preserving gauge symmetry.
This toolkit underpinned 't Hooft's renormalizability proof and opened the era of precision Standard Model calculations: the 'Veltman–'t Hooft' analyses used measured sin²θ_W values to predict, in advance, the masses of the W⁺/⁻ and Z⁰ bosons, confirmed at CERN in 1983.
Workplaces: Utrecht University, University of Michigan
Netherlands