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Gian Carlo Wick (15 October 1909 – 20 April 1992) was an Italian
theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...
who made important contributions to
quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
. The
Wick rotation In physics, Wick rotation, named after Italian physicist Gian Carlo Wick, is a method of finding a solution to a mathematical problem in Minkowski space from a solution to a related problem in Euclidean space by means of a transformation that sub ...
, Wick contraction,
Wick's theorem Wick's theorem is a method of reducing high- order derivatives to a combinatorics problem. It is named after Italian physicist Gian-Carlo Wick. It is used extensively in quantum field theory to reduce arbitrary products of creation and annihil ...
, and the
Wick product In probability theory, the Wick product is a particular way of defining an adjusted product of a set of random variables. In the lowest order product the adjustment corresponds to subtracting off the mean value, to leave a result whose mean is zero ...
are named after him.Gian-Carlo Wick, October 15, 1909—April 20, 1992, Maurice Jacob
biographical memoir, National Academies Press. Accessed on line October 6, 2009.


Life

Gian Carlo Wick, first name "Gian Carlo", was born in Turin, Italy in 1909. Wick's father was a Latinist and Greekist, and his mother, Barbara Allason (1877–1968), was a well-known Italian writer and anti-fascist. His paternal grandfather had emigrated from
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
to Italy and his grandmother from
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous c ...
. In 1930 Wick received his doctoral degree in
Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
under G. Wataghin with a thesis on the electronic theory of metals. He then went to
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The or ...
and
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as we ...
to further his study of physics. One of the professors he got to know there was
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematis ...
. Heisenberg liked the young Italian theoretician—they shared a common interest in classical music—and treated him with an affection that Wick never forgot. Once a week, Heisenberg had invited Wick and other students to his home for spirited evenings of talk and Ping-Pong. Wick became
Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and t ...
's assistant in Rome in 1932. In 1937 he became professor of theoretical physics in
Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its h ...
and then in
Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and '' comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...
before returning to Rome in 1940 to become chair of theoretical physics. In 1946 he followed Fermi to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
, first to the
University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...
, then to Berkeley. Wick refused to subscribe a controversial oathHardman J. ''UC Berkeley: The Loyalty Oath Controversy 1949-51''
, during the
McCarthy era McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term orig ...
, so he was fired at Berkeley and went to the
Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylv ...
in 1951. He remained there until 1957, interrupted by stays at the
Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in
Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
and at
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
in
Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ...
. In 1957 he became chief of the theory department at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1965 he became a tenured professor at Columbia University in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, where he collaborated with
Tsung-Dao Lee Tsung-Dao Lee (; born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee–Yang theorem, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons, and soliton stars ...
; after his retirement from Columbia he worked at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. In 1967 he received the Dannie Heineman Prize. In 1968 he received the first Ettore Majorana Prize. He was a member of the
United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...
and the
Accademia dei Lincei The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Ro ...
. Wick was an avid mountain climber. He was twice married and had two sons.


Work

As a member of Fermi's group in Rome, Wick calculated the magnetic moment of the hydrogen molecule with group-theoretical methods. He extended Fermi's theory of beta decay to positron emission and K-capture, and explained the relationship between the range of a force and the mass of its
force carrier In quantum field theory, a force carrier, also known as messenger particle or intermediate particle, is a type of particle that gives rise to forces between other particles. These particles serve as the quanta of a particular kind of physical fiel ...
particle. He also worked on slowing down of neutrons in matter, and joined a group of Italian physicists led by Gilberto Bernardini which made the first measurement of the lifetime of the
muon A muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 '' e'' and a spin of , but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As wit ...
. While in the United States, Wick made fundamental contributions to quantum field theory, such as the Wick theorem in 1950, which showed how to express calculations in quantum field theory in terms of normally-ordered products and thus derive Feynman rules. He also introduced the
Wick rotation In physics, Wick rotation, named after Italian physicist Gian Carlo Wick, is a method of finding a solution to a mathematical problem in Minkowski space from a solution to a related problem in Euclidean space by means of a transformation that sub ...
, in which computations are analytically continued from
Minkowski space In mathematical physics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) () is a combination of three-dimensional Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inerti ...
to four-dimensional
Euclidean space Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are Euclidean s ...
using a coordinate change to
imaginary time Imaginary time is a mathematical representation of time which appears in some approaches to special relativity and quantum mechanics. It finds uses in connecting quantum mechanics with statistical mechanics and in certain cosmological theories. ...
The Wick rotation, D. M. O'Brien, ''Australian Journal of Physics'' 28 (February 1975), pp. 7–13, . He developed the helicity formulation for collisions between particles with arbitrary spin, worked with Geoffrey Chew on the impulse approximation, and worked on meson theory, symmetry principles in physics, and the vacuum structure of quantum field theory.


Selected bibliography

* Über die Wechselwirkung zwischen Neutronen und Protonen, ''Zeitschrift für Physik'' 84, #11–12 (1933), pp. 799–800, . * The Evaluation of the Collision Matrix, ''Physical Review'' 80 (1950), pp. 268–272, . * Properties of Bethe-Salpeter Wave Functions, ''Physical Review'' 96 (1954), pp. 1124–1134, (introduced the Wick rotation.) * Introduction to Some Recent Work in Meson Theory, ''Reviews of Modern Physics'' 27 (1955), pp. 339–362, . * (with Maurice Jacob) On the general theory of collisions for particles with spin, ''Annals of Physics'' 7, #4 (August 1959), pp. 404–428, . * (with Arthur Strong Wightman and Eugene P. Wigner) Superselection Rule for Charge, ''Physical Review D'' 1 (1970), pp. 3267–3269, . * (with
Tsung-Dao Lee Tsung-Dao Lee (; born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee–Yang theorem, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons, and soliton stars ...
) Vacuum stability and vacuum excitation in a spin-0 field theory, ''Physical Review D'' 9 (1974), pp. 2291–2316, .


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wick, Gian Carlo 1909 births 1992 deaths 20th-century Italian physicists Theoretical physicists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences People associated with CERN Recipients of the Matteucci Medal Scientists from Turin