Richard Feynman
1918–1988, New York, USA, Los Angeles, USA
American physicist who developed Feynman diagrams and made foundational contributions to quantum electrodynamics (QED).
Feynman developed a new approach to quantum field theory based on the 'path integral', and invented Feynman diagrams — a visual tool that made calculating complex particle scattering processes tractable, now used throughout modern particle physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for work on quantum electrodynamics.
Nobel-winning work
Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Schwinger and Tomonaga 'for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles'. From 1947–1949 he reformulated QED using space–time diagrams (Feynman diagrams) and path integrals, giving a practical, relativistically consistent way to compute — and renormalize — processes such as the anomalous electron magnetic moment and Lamb shift.
Workplaces: Caltech
United States