Abstract
The scientific production of Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg von Breidenbach reached a peak in the years 1936–39, in which he produced a series of deeply original papers on quantum field theory and its applications to nuclear matter. The only trace of this work in the memory of today’s physicists is the Stueckelberg B-field, a trick to avoid troubles in quantizing massive vector-fields. Yet Stueckelberg’s innovations went far beyond this formal contribution. For instance, he devised the first manifestly covariant perturbation theory, and he greatly contributed to the meson-field theory of nuclear interactions. Considerations of style, timing, and character explain the disparity between his achievements and their long-term appreciation.
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Darrigol, O. (2009). Stueckelberg’s Unitary Field Theory of 1936–1939. In: Lacki, J., Ruegg, H., Wanders, G. (eds) E.C.G. Stueckelberg, An Unconventional Figure of Twentieth Century Physics. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-8878-2_5
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