The Oldstone Conference of 11 to 14 April 1949 was the third of three postwar conferences held to discuss quantum physics; arranged for the National Academy of Sciences by

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...

, who was again chairman. It followed the

Shelter Island Conference The first Shelter Island Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics was held from June 2–4, 1947 at the Ram's Head Inn in Shelter Island, New York. Shelter Island was the first major opportunity since Pearl Harbor and the Manhattan Pro ...

of 1947 and the Pocono Conference of 1948. There were 24 participants; new participants were Robert Christie,

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum m ...

(whose writings explained Feynman’s ideas), George Placzek, and

Hideki Yukawa was a Japanese theoretical physicist and the first Japanese Nobel laureate for his prediction of the pi meson, or pion. Biography He was born as Hideki Ogawa in Tokyo and grew up in Kyoto with two older brothers, two older sisters, and two yo ...

. Held at Oldstone-on-the-Hudson in

Peekskill, New York Peekskill is a city in northwestern Westchester County, New York, United States, from New York City. Established as a village in 1816, it was incorporated as a city in 1940. It lies on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across from ...

, the main talking-point was

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...

’s approach to quantum electrodynamics (QED); Feynman was now (at 30) the leading physicist of his generation. Griffin (1997) p. 118

References

* * Physics conferences History of science and technology in the United States Foundational quantum physics 1949 in science 1949 in the United States 1949 conferences Science events in the United States April 1949 events in the United States {{quantum-stub