The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Abstract SES 0135615 The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics David Kaiser MIT Unlike traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of theoretical physics, which have been framed as intellectual or conceptual histories, this project examines the history of recent physics with a focus on calculational skills, local practices, and theoretical tools and techniques. In particular, this project traces the history of a theoretical tool which came to dominate nearly every branch of modern physics: Richard Feynman 's simple line-drawings, introduced in the late 1940s. Of central interest is how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams, in and out of a series of competing theoretical frameworks for describing sub-atomic matter. Such a skills-based view allows historians to unpack the history of postwar theoretical physics from the ground up, as a story ultimately about designing, deploying, and disputing the tools which undergird everyday calculations. Complementing earlier studies of conceptual worldviews or "paradigms," Kaiser's historical project concentrates on the simultaneous crafting of research practices and of the scientific practitioners who put them to work. Focusing on Feynman diagrams and their dispersion from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s illuminates larger transitions within postwar physics, including changing notions of how to collaborate with roomfuls of graduate students; how to make sense of unprecedented reams of experimental data; how to train young physicists at the postdoctoral stage; and how to communicate new research techniques in mimeographed summer school lecture notes and preprints. The competing uses and interpretations of Feynman diagrams during the early postwar decades can only be understood within the context of these institutional and pedagogical transitions. At stake was nothing less than what should count as "theoretical physics," and how someone should be trained to become a "theorist." This project should therefore be of interest both to historians and sociologists of modern physics, as well as to philosophers of science who work on theory construction and selection. The expected outcome is book on the early history of Feynman diagrams, as well as conference presentations and published articles.