Kenneth G. Wilson | Biography

Born in Waltham, Massachusetts, on June 8, 1936, Kenneth Geddes Wilson was the oldest of six children born to Edgar Bright Wilson, Jr., a chemistry professor at Harvard University, and the former Emily Fisher Buckingham.

At the age of sixteen, Wilson was accepted as a freshman into Harvard University, from which he received a B.A. in math and physics in 1956. He chose to do his graduate work in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, where his advisor was Murray Gell-Mann. Wilson's doctoral thesis dealt with quantum field theory, an area of physics that attempts to integrate relativity theory with quantum mechanics (the object behind combining these two major theories was to develop an overall conceptual picture of the physical world). In particular, Wilson investigated an aspect of quantum electrodynamics (QED) that had been particularly troubling for theoretical physicists. The use of traditional QED theory, which describes the interaction of particles within an electromagnetic field, sometimes resulted in bizarre and nonsensical results, such as the prediction of particles with infinite electrical charges. One way around this dilemma had been the use of a mathematical procedure developed by Gell-Mann, among others, known as renormalization; this procedure could extract important physical values from a calculation running into infinity. In his own thesis, Wilson used the techniques of renormalization to study the properties of an elementary particle known as the K meson.

After completing his doctorate, Wilson spent three years at Harvard University as a junior fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows. He then continued his research on elementary particles as a Ford Foundation Fellow at the CERN particle accelerator facility in Geneva. At the completion of that fellowship in 1963, he was appointed assistant professor of physics at Cornell University. Over the next few years, Wilson was promoted to associate, and then full professor in 1970. In 1974, he was appointed to the James A. Weeks Chair of Physical Science at Cornell.

It was at Cornell that Wilson became interested in a new aspect of theoretical physics, the study of phase transitions at critical points. Physicists had been studying critical phenomena since the early 1870s; in the process, they discovered a number of examples of phase transitions, such as the sudden loss of magnetism demonstrated by iron, cobalt, and nickel at a distinctive temperature, the "Curie point." But most critical phenomena are complex events, and early theories were able to do no more than to predict that they did occur, not how or under what circumstances.

Wilson's approach was to break a phase transition down into smaller, more easily studied subunits, a technique that had been developed by others. He then applied the principles of renormalization to these subunits. In a pair of articles published in 1971 in Physical Review B Wilson outlined the result of his analysis, a theory that correctly predicts known critical data. It was for this work that Wilson received the 1982 Nobel Prize for physics. At the presentation ceremonies, Stig Lundqvist of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that Wilson's theory "gave a complete theoretical description of the behavior close to the critical point and gave also methods to calculate numerically the crucial quantities."

Since the mid-1970s, Wilson has returned to the research of his graduate years, the study of elementary particles. Like many others, he has been attempting to use the methods of renormalization to understand the interaction of quarks, one group of fundamental particles of which all matter seems to consist. As a result of this research, he has also developed another interest: the development of faster and more efficient computers. As he has seen how his own research and that of others is limited by existing computer technology, he has become an outspoken advocate for the development of improved hardware to deal with problems of particle physics. In connection with this interest, Wilson accepted an appointment as director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering at Cornell in 1985.

In 1988, he ended his long affiliation with Cornell to become the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University. In recent years, his research has focused on computer simulations and modeling of a variety of physical phenomena. Since 1990, Wilson has also become active on two important national committees dealing with science and education policy, the National Academy of Science's Committee on Physical Science, Mathematics, and Applications and the Committee on the Federal Role in Educational Research.

From 1991 to 1996, concurrent with his post at OSU, Wilson was a principal investigator on Ohio's Project Discovery, an National Science Foundation Statewide Systemic Initiative. Wilson now codirects Ohio State University's Learning By Redesign program. In 1997 he cowrote Redesigning Education.

Wilson was married in 1982 to Alison Brown, a computer specialist at Cornell Computer Services, whom he had met in 1975. He enjoys hiking, folk dancing, and playing the oboe.