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Sidney Coleman

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	Topics Sidney Coleman Topic Home Life and work Sidney Coleman grew up on the Far North Side of ChicagoChicago Chicago is the largest city in the U.S.... . In 1957, he got his undergraduate degree from the Illinois Institute of TechnologyIllinois Institute of Technology Overview Illinois Institute of Technology is a private Ph.D.-granting university with programs in engineering, science, psychology, a... . He received his PhD from Caltech in 1962, and moved to Harvard UniversityHarvard University "Harvard" redirects here. For other uses of the name Harvard, see Harvard .... that year, where he spent his entire career, meeting his wife Diana there in the late 1970s. They were married in 1982. "He was a giant in a peculiar sense, because he's not known to the general populace," Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow told the Boston Globe. "He's not a Stephen Hawking; he has virtually no visibility outside. But within the community of theoretical physicists, he's kind of a major god. He is the physicist's physicist." In 1966, Antonino ZichichiAntonino Zichichi Antonino Zichichi is an Italian physicist who has worked in the field of nuclear physics.... recruited Coleman as a lecturer at the then-new summer school at International School for Subnuclear Physics in Erice, Sicily. A legendary figure at the school throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Coleman was awarded the title "Best Lecturer" on the occasion of the school's fifteenth anniversary (1979). His explanation of spontaneous symmetry breakingSpontaneous symmetry breaking Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics takes place when a system that is symmetric with respect to some symmetry group goe... in terms of a little man living inside a ferromagnet has often been cited by later popularizers. The classic particle physics text Aspects of Symmetry (1985) is a collection of Coleman's lectures at Erice. His lectures at Harvard were also legendary. Students in one quantum field theory course created Tshirts bearing his image and a collection of his more noted quotations, among them: "Not only God knows, I know, and by the end of the semester, you will know." In 1989, he won the US National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the... Award for Excellence in Scientific Reviewing. That award praised his "lucid, insightful, and influential reviews on partially conserved currents, gauge theories, instantons, and magnetic monopoles--subjects fundamental to theoretical physics." [https://winfe.physics.ox.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v12p117y1989.pdf] Contributions to physics Some of his best known works are Coleman-Mandula theoremColeman-Mandula theorem In theoretical physics, the Coleman-Mandula theorem, named after Sidney Coleman and Jeffrey Mandula, is a no-go theorem that... TadpolesTadpole (physics) In physics, a tadpole is a Feynman diagram with one external leg, which henceforth encodes a one-point function.... Coleman theorem EquivalenceEquivalence Equivalence or equivalent may refer to:... of the Thirring modelThirring model In quantum field theory, the Thirring model is a model of a self-interacting Dirac field.... and the quantum Sine-Gordon equationSine-Gordon equation The sine-Gordon equation is a partial differential equation in two dimensions.... SemiclassicalSemiclassical In physics, the adjective semiclassical has different precise meanings depending on the context.... analysis of the fate of a false vacuumFacts About False vacuum A false vacuum is a metastable sector of quantum field theory which appears to be a perturbative vacuum but is unstable to i... Coleman-Weinberg potentialColeman-Weinberg potential The Coleman-Weinberg model represents quantum electrodynamics of a scalar field in four-dimensions.... Q-ballQ-Ball In theoretical physics, Q-ball refers to a type of... s in the thin-wall limit External links - physicists' celebration of Sidney Coleman's life , November 20, 2007. , November 29, 2007. , January 20, 2008. , May 2008, written by Sheldon Glashow. , A lecture by Prof. Coleman at the New England sectional meeting of the American Physical Society April 9, 1994. . Video of lectures by Sidney Coleman at Harvard in 1975-1976.