Andreas Emil Petermann (27 September 1922,

Lausanne Lausanne ( , , , ) ; it, Losanna; rm, Losanna. is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French speaking canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and fac ...

, Switzerland – 21 August 2011, Lausanne), known as André Petermann, was a Swiss

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 experim ...

known for introducing the

renormalization group In theoretical physics, the term renormalization group (RG) refers to a formal apparatus that allows systematic investigation of the changes of a physical system as viewed at different scales. In particle physics, it reflects the changes in the ...

, suggesting a quark-like model, and work related to the

anomalous magnetic dipole moment In quantum electrodynamics, the anomalous magnetic moment of a particle is a contribution of effects of quantum mechanics, expressed by Feynman diagrams with loops, to the magnetic moment of that particle. (The ''magnetic moment'', also called ...

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 wi ...

. Petermann obtained his doctorate from the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switze ...

in May 1952 under the supervision of professor Ernst Stueckelberg. The work was funded by the Swiss Atomic Energy Commission. Following Lausanne, Petermann moved on to the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

, UK, before he became a CERN staff member in 1955. The CERN Theory Division was at that time still hosted at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

. It was then moved to Geneva together with the CERN experimental groups in 1957.

Work

Jointly with his advisor, Ernst Stueckelberg, in 1953, they introduced, and named the "

", which describes the running of physical couplings with energy. He also, apparently independently, considered the idea of

quarks A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly ...

, albeit in a highly abstract, speculative form. Petermann submitted a four-page paper entitled "''Propriétés de l'étrangeté et une formule de masse pour les mésons vectoriels''" to the journal ''

Nuclear Physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

'', which received the paper on 30 December 1963, but did not publish the article before March 1965. In this paper Petermann discusses what has become known as

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All common ...

s as named by

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...

, whose ''

Physics Letters ''Physics Letters'' was a scientific journal published from 1962 to 1966, when it split in two series now published by Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its ...

'' publication was submitted during the first days of January 1964, and "

aces ACeS (PT Asia Cellular Satellite) was a regional satellite telecommunications company based in Jakarta, Indonesia. It offered GSM-like satellite telephony services to Asian market. The coverage area included Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Phil ...

" as named by

George Zweig George Zweig (; born May 30, 1937) is a Russian-American physicist. He was trained as a particle physicist under Richard Feynman. He introduced, independently of Murray Gell-Mann, the quark model (although he named it "aces"). He later turned h ...

, who wrote two CERN-TH preprints slightly later in 1964. Petermann is also remembered for his pioneering calculation of the next-to-leading order correction to the

of the

. Petermann was not consistent when signing his scientific papers; in the beginning of his career he used ''Petermann'', then ''Peterman'' and later he alternated between the two forms. A list of his works can be found in the

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

Literature Databas

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Petermann, Andre 1922 births 2011 deaths Swiss physicists People associated with CERN