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Schwinger was born in New York City, attended the City College of New York as an undergraduate, and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1939 where he studied under I.I. Rabi. He worked at the University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal Berkeley UCB or UC Berkeley is a public, coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate and its bridge. and was later appointed to a position at Purdue UniversityPurdue University Established 1869 School type Public, Land grant President Martin C. Jischke Location West Lafayette, IN, USA (Main Campus) Enrollment 69,050 Faculty 14,052 Revenue US $1. 12 billion Endowment US $ 233 million Campuses 18,370 acres (74 km.
During World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough Schwinger worked at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, providing theoretical support for the development of radarThis article is about the device. For the fictional character in M A S H see Corporal Walter (Radar) O'Reilly. antenna (approximately 40m (130ft) in diameter) rotates on a track to observe activities near the horizon. Radar is an acronym for ra dio d etec. He tried applying his knowledge as a Nuclear Physicist to electromagnetic engineering problems, and arrived at results on nuclear scattering. Consequently, Schwinger began to apply his understanding of radiation to quantum physics.
After the war, Schwinger left Purdue for Harvard University, where he taught from 1945 to 1974. He married in 1947. During this time, he developed the concept of renormalization, which explained the Lamb shift in an electron's magnetic field. He also realized, in his study of particle physics, that neutrinos would come in multiple varieties, associated with leptons like the electron and muon, which was experimentally verified in recent years.
In his later career, displeased with the complexity of other explanations of particle physics experiments, Schwinger developed source theory , which treats gravitons, photons, and other particles uniformly.
Schwinger left Harvard in 1974 for a position the University of California, Los Angeles where he continued his work on source theory. Here, he established a legacy of excellent lecturing and mentoring skills; three of his students themselves went on to win Nobel Prizes.