Wigner

Eugene Paul Wigner

Born: 17 Nov 1902 in Budapest, Hungary
Died: 1 Jan 1995 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA

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Wigner's Hungarian version of Eugene Paul was Jenó Pál. He was a friend of John von Neumann and they were in the same class. His first degree was in chemical engineering fron Berlin. His work then turned to applying group theory to quantum mechanics and he was working on this during (1928-30) when he lectured in Berlin.

From 1930 to 1933 Wigner spent part of the year at Princeton, part at Berlin. His Berlin post vanished under the Nazi rules passed in 1933 and from then, except for the years 1936 - 1938 in Wisconsin, Wigner spent the rest of his career at Princeton. He was appointed to the chair of mathematical physics at Princeton in 1938.

Wigner's most important work was on quantum mechanics, in particular the concept of the symmetry in space and time that characterises subatomic particles. This work involved him in a deep study of group representations. In 1938 he constructed a class of irreducible unitary representations of the Lorentz group.

His important works include Dispersion Relations and Their Connection with Causality (1964) and Symmetries and Reflections (1967).

References:

  1. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. A S Wightman, Eugene Paul Wigner 1902-1995, Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 42 (1995), 769-771.
  3. E P Wigner, The recollections of Eugene P Wigner as told to Andrew Szanton (New York , 1992).
  4. E Vogt, Eugene Paul Wigner: a towering figure of modern physics, Physics today 48 (12) (1995), 40-44.
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JOC/EFR February 1996