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Res Jost

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Res Jost
Born(1918-01-10)10 January 1918
Died3 October 1990(1990-10-03) (aged 72)
NationalitySwiss
Alma materUniversity of Zurich
Known forJost function
AwardsMax Planck medal (1984)
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical physics
InstitutionsETH Zurich
ThesisZur Ladungsabhängigkeit der Kernkräfte in der Vektormesontheorie ohne neutrale Mesonen (1946)
Doctoral advisorGregor Wentzel
Doctoral students

Res Jost (10 January 1918 – 3 October 1990) was a Swiss theoretical physicist, who worked mainly in constructive quantum field theory.[1]

Biography

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Res Jost was born on January 10, 1918, in Bern. He is the son of the physics teacher Wilhelm Jost and Hermine Spycher. In 1949 Jost married the Viennese physicist Hilde Fleischer. Jost studied in Bern and at the University of Zurich, where he received his doctorate in 1946 under the supervision of the German physicist Gregor Wentzel.[2] He then spent half a year with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where he introduced the Jost function into scattering theory. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant of Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich. From 1949 to 1955 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he worked with Walter Kohn, Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger and Abraham Pais among others. From 1955, he was associate professor for theoretical physics at ETH and starting from 1959 full professor. In 1964, he and Rudolf Haag created the journal Communications in Mathematical Physics.[3][4] He died on October 3, 1990, in Zurich.[5]

Jost researched quantum-mechanical scattering theory (also inverse scattering theory: Reconstruction of potentials from scattering data) and the mathematical quantum field theory, where he in 1958 with the methods of Arthur Strong Wightman proved the PCT theorem and in 1957 introduced the Jost–LehmannDyson representation,[6] an integral representation of the expectancy value of the commutator of two field operators.[1]

Honors and awards

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Since 1977 Jost was corresponding member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.[7] In 1984 Jost received the Max Planck Medal for outstanding achievements in theoretical physics.[8]

Selected works

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  • Jost, Res (1965). The general theory of quantized fields. Vol. 4. American Mathematical Society. ASIN B0007DUAUK.
  • Jost, Res (1995). Hepp, Klaus; Hunziker, Walter; Kohn, Walter (eds.). Das Märchen vom Elfenbeinernen Turm. Reden und Aufsätze. Lecture Notes in Physics Monographs (in German). Vol. 34. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-49276-4. ISBN 978-3540492764.
  • Jost, Res; Schneider, Walter (1969). Quantenmechanik: nach Vorlesungen im Wintersemester 1966/67 (in German). Vereins der Mathematiker und Physiker an der ETH Zürich.
  • Jost, Res; Italian Physical Society, eds. (1969). Local quantum theory. Vol. 45. Academic Press. ISBN 9780123688453.
  • Jost, Res (1984). "Erinnerungen: Erlesenes und Erlebtes". Physikalische Blätter (in German). 40 (7): 178–181. doi:10.1002/phbl.19840400706.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Kohn, Walter; Ruelle, David; Wightman, Arthur (February 1992). "Obituary: Res Jost". Physics Today. 45 (2): 120–121. doi:10.1063/1.2809552.
  2. ^ The doctoral thesis is Jost, Res (1946). Zur Ladungsabhängigkeit der Kernkräfte in der Vektormesontheorie ohne neutrale Mesonen (Thesis) (in German). Zurich.
  3. ^ Jaffe, Arthur. "Haag's visit in honor of 40 years of Communications in Mathematical Physics". arthurjaffe.com. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  4. ^ Jaffe, Arthur (2015). "50 Years of Communications in Mathematical Physics" (PDF). News Bulletin, International Association of Mathematical Physics: 15–26.
  5. ^ Günter Scharf: Jost, Res in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  6. ^ Jost, Res; Lehmann, Harry (1957). "Integral-Darstellung kausaler Kommutatoren". Nuovo Cimento (in German). 5 (6): 1598–1610. Bibcode:1957NCim....5.1598J. doi:10.1007/bf02856049. S2CID 123500326. Dyson, Freeman J (1958). "Integral representations of causal commutators". Physical Review. 110 (6): 1460. Bibcode:1958PhRv..110.1460D. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.1460.
  7. ^ "National Academy of Sciences member page of Res Jost". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  8. ^ "Max Planck Medal Prize winners". German Physical Society (in German). Retrieved March 6, 2021.

Further reading

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