feynman phd thesis

Richard P. Feynman Papers

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This collection documents the career of Nobel Prize winner Richard Phillips Feynman (1918-1988). It contains correspondence, biographical materials, course and lecture notes, speeches, manuscripts, publications, and technical notes relating to his work in quantum electrodynamics. Feynman served as Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology from 1951 until his death.

• Creation: 1933-1988
• Feynman, Richard P. (Richard Phillips), 1918-1988 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection has not been digitized, and is available only in the reading room of the Caltech Archives. Access is available to anyone conducting research for which it is necessary; please contact the Caltech Archives to make an appointment.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright to this collection is not held by Caltech. If you wish to quote or reproduce an item created by Richard Feynman beyond the extent of fair use, please contact his heirs' agent, Melanie Jackson Agency, at [email protected]. Copyright to works by others may be held by their respective creators or publishers, or their heirs. If you wish to quote or reproduce them beyond fair use, please contact the copyright holder to request permission. ("Fair use" is a legal principle which permits unlicensed reproduction in certain circumstances. You are responsible for determining whether your own reproduction would fit the legal requirements for fair use.)

Biographical / Historical

Physicist Richard Feynman won his scientific renown through the development of quantum electrodynamics, or QED, a theory describing the interaction of particles and atoms in radiation fields. As a part of this work he invented what came to be known as "Feynman Diagrams," visual representations of space-time particle interactions. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, together with J. Schwinger and S. I. Tomonaga, in 1965. Later in his life Feynman became a prominent public figure through his association with the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the publication of two best-selling books of personal recollections. Feynman was born in the borough of Queens in New York City on May 11, 1918. He grew up and attended high school in Far Rockaway, New York. In 1939, he received his BS degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then attended Princeton University as a Proctor Fellow from 1940 to 1942, where he began his investigation of quantum electrodynamics under the supervision of J. A. Wheeler. He was awarded his PhD in 1942 for his thesis on the least action principle. While still at Princeton, Feynman was recruited for the atomic bomb project. He was transferred to Los Alamos in 1942, where he headed a team undertaking complicated calculations using very primitive computers. While at Los Alamos, Feynman became good friends with Hans Bethe, who at the end of the war secured a position for Feynman as an associate professor of physics at Cornell. Feynman remained at Cornell from 1945 to 1951. During this time he formalized his theory of quantum electrodynamics and began to publish his results. He also participated in the Shelter Island Conference of 1947, which helped to determine the course of American physics in the atomic age. At this conference he introduced his theory of QED to the leading American physicists. In 1951, Feynman accepted an offer to become the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, a position he filled until his death. While at Caltech Feynman continued his work at the leading edge of theoretical physics, making important contributions to the study of liquid helium, particle physics, and later quantum chromodynamics. He also began his distinguished career as a teacher and lecturer. In 1961 and 1962 he delivered to Caltech's freshmen the introductory lectures that were later published as The Feynman Lectures on Physics . In 1986, Feynman was asked to serve on the Presidential Commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger accident. In a dramatic fashion, Feynman publicly demonstrated the inelasticity of the shuttle's O-rings at near freezing temperatures, a leading cause of the disaster. He also contributed an extended appendix to the Committee's report, highlighting the technical and administrative deficiencies of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space program. Feynman's many interests outside of science, such as his fondness for codes and safecracking, his bongo drums, his theatrical appearances, his artwork, plus his experiments in out-of-body experiences, are well documented in his autobiographies, as well as in his papers at Caltech. Feynman continued his scientific work and his lecturing activities up until his death on February 15, 1988, after a long battle with a rare form of cancer.

39 linear feet (93 boxes)

Language of Materials

Additional description, arrangement.

The two groups of papers have been kept separate, although box numbering is continuous throughout the collection. The guide to the collection is in two parts, and researchers must expect to consult both parts. At the time the second group of papers was processed, an effort was made to create an arrangement parallel to that of group 1. However, the different content and larger scope of group 2 eventually resulted in a somewhat different scheme. Correspondence: The Feynman collection contains a large amount of both incoming and outgoing correspondence. Feynman's scientific contacts include many of the greatest names in twentieth-century physics: Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Stephen Hawking, Werner Heisenberg, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Hideki Yukawa—to name only a few. In Group 1, correspondence has been spread over four series: correspondence (largely with individual colleagues), miscellaneous or general correspondence, publication correspondence, and, in the biographical series, a small number of personal letters. For Group 2, an attempt was made to pull both personal, general, and publication correspondence into one main series, Series 1. However, when letters demonstrated both intellectual and physical links with other documents, their original contextual relationships were maintained. Thus, publication correspondence will be found both in Series 1 and in Series 6. Fan mail surrounding Feynman's television appearances, his two autobiographies, and his Nobel Prize has been placed in Series 2, Biographical, as has other correspondence relating to his business and consulting activities documented there. Course and Lecture Notes: Feynman's lecture courses at institutions in Southern California other than Caltech, and even outside the U.S., are represented in Group 2. Of special interest are the courses Feynman gave, in addition to those he attended, at Hughes Aircraft Company, and the sets of lectures that were later published as Statistical Mechanics and QED (originally the Mautner Lectures, which were in turn predated by the Robb Lectures, first delivered at the University of Aukland, New Zealand). Material pertaining to the publication of these lecture series is found in Group 2 correspondence under the respective publishers. Talks, Speeches, Conferences: In this category are those lectures delivered for a special occasion or purpose, usually as single lectures, but sometimes as a series, and in both formal and informal settings. This category overlaps somewhat with Course Notes and Lectures. In Group 1, these materials are to be found under Professional Organizations and Meetings (Series 3) and Manuscripts (Series 5). In Group 2, they are arranged under Series 5 in chronological order, when dated, and in a sub-series of undated talks. Folders in this category contain a wide variety of talk-related documents, from holograph notes to correspondence to slides, figures, or transparencies. Publications: Group 1 contains a small series of publication correspondence (Group 1, Series 4), mostly pertaining to Feynman's book or monograph publishers; in Group 2, similar correspondence has been placed in the main correspondence series (Group 2, Series 1). Group 2's Series 6 lists Feynman's publications by title in chronological order. Folders contain a variety of material, from holograph notes to correspondence to proofs and prints. Researchers should note that formal reprints have been grouped at the end of Group 2, in Section 9. Working Notes and Calculations: The vast majority of Feynman's working notes are located in Group 2. A representative sample from his early years appears in Group 1, Series 5. Of special interest in this group are notebooks from his student days, beginning circa 1933. The notes in Group 2 capture the breadth and depth of Feynman's thought, as well as reflecting many aspects of his personality. They cover a wide range of subjects, from quantum electrodynamics and later quantum chromodynamics to biology and computers. The notes also reflect Feynman's working style. They are sometimes carefully organized into notebooks that were rigorously dated, such as the binders dated between 1966 and 1987 at the beginning of Group 2, Series 7. Unfortunately for researchers, these are the exception. The great mass of Feynman's working notes are scattered on miscellaneous sheets of papers, envelopes, placemats, and seemingly whatever else was at hand when thoughts struck him. Feynman occasionally took time to organize these into a system for files, although only a small fraction of his notes found their way into such a system. The great majority was left in a scattered condition and grouped during the processing of the papers as well as possible by subject matter. Many miscellaneous papers remain. Work of Others: Feynman officially maintained neutrality on the work of his contemporaries, but informal commentaries in the form of notes and marginal glosses on the work of others abound in his papers. A small segment of such materials can be found in Group 1, Series 5. A large amount of work by others, both with and without Feynman's commentary, forms Group 2's Series 8. A preponderance of material on computers dictated an arrangement in which computer-related projects are categorized separately. Individuals whose work is strongly represented—largely Caltech colleagues, students, or collaborators—are listed singly; otherwise materials have been listed by subject.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The Richard Phillips Feynman Papers were given to Caltech by Richard Feynman and Gweneth Feynman in two main installments. The first group of papers, now boxes 1-20 of the collection, was donated by Richard Feynman himself beginning in 1968, with additions later. It contains materials dating from about 1933 to 1970. The second group occupies boxes 21-90. It was given to Caltech by Feynman's widow Gweneth early in 1989. Group 2 contains papers primarily from the 1970s and 1980s, although some older material is present. Supplements since 1994 occupy three boxes and have come from various donors outside the Feynman family.

Related Materials

Researchers should also consult the Caltech Archives' Historical Files, which contain much miscellaneous material on Richard Feynman acquired from many sources. Similarly the Photo Archives offer a selection of images, obtained in a similar way. The audio and video collections contain substantial Feynman material; researchers should consult the specific index. Manuscript collections at Caltech which contain materials of particular relevance to Feynman include the Robert Leighton Papers and course lecture notes by Bruce H. Morgan.

Processing Information

The initial processing of this collection was completed on July 1, 1993.

• Challenger (Spacecraft)--Accidents
• Gravitation--Research
• Particles (Nuclear physics)
• Physics -- Study and teaching
• Quantum chromodynamics
• Quantum electrodynamics
• Quantum mechanics
• Space shuttles--Accidents--Investigation--United States

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Repository details.

Part of the California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections Repository

Collection organization

Richard P. Feynman Papers, FeynmanRP2. California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections.

Cite Item Description

Richard P. Feynman Papers, FeynmanRP2. California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections. https://collections.archives.caltech.edu/repositories/2/resources/168 Accessed September 05, 2024.

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Feynman's thesis [electronic resource] : a new approach to quantum theory

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• World Scientific

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Creators/contributors, contents/summary.

• # Least Action in Classical Mechanics: # The Concept of Functional # The Principle of Least Action # Conservation of Energy. Constants of the Motion # Particles Interacting Through an Intermediate Oscillator # Least Action in Quantum Mechanics: # The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics # The Calculation of Matrix Elements in the Language of a Lagrangian # The Equations of Motion in Lagrangian Form # Translation to the Ordinary Notation of Quantum Mechanics # The Generalization to Any Action Function # Conservation of Energy. Constants of the Motion # The Role of the Wave Function # Transition Probabilities # Expectation Values for Observables # Application to the Forced Harmonic Oscillator # Particles Interacting Through an Intermediate Oscillator # Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics # The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

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This is What Richard Feynman’s PhD Thesis Looks Like: A Video Introduction

in Physics | April 2nd, 2020 2 Comments

Richard Feyn­man wasn’t just an “ordi­nary genius.” He was, accord­ing to math­e­mati­cian Mark Kac “in his tax­on­o­my of the two types of genius­es ,” a “magi­cian” and “a cham­pi­on of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge so effec­tive and so beloved that he has gen­er­at­ed an entire canon of per­son­al mythol­o­gy,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings . Many a Feyn­man anec­dote comes from Feyn­man him­self, who bur­nished his pop­u­lar image with two best­selling auto­bi­ogra­phies. His sto­ries about his life in sci­ence are extra­or­di­nary, and true, includ­ing one he tells the first sem­i­nar he gave at Prince­ton in 1939, attend­ed by Wolf­gang Pauli, John von Neu­mann, and Albert Ein­stein.

“Ein­stein,” Feyn­man writes in Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man! , “appre­ci­at­ed that things might be dif­fer­ent from what his the­o­ry stat­ed; he was very tol­er­ant of oth­er ideas.” The young upstart had many oth­er ideas. As biog­ra­ph­er James Gle­ick writes, Feyn­man was “near­ing the crest of his pow­ers. At twen­ty three… there may now have been no physi­cist on earth who could match his exu­ber­ant com­mand over the native mate­ri­als of the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ence.” He had yet to com­plete his dis­ser­ta­tion and would take a break from his doc­tor­al stud­ies to work on the Man­hat­tan Project in 1941.

Then, in 1942, Feyn­man sub­mit­ted his the­sis, Prin­ci­ples of least action in quan­tum mechan­ics , super­vised John Archibald Wheel­er, with whom Feyn­man shares the name of an elec­tro­dy­nam­ic the­o­rem. Pub­lished for the first time in 2005 by World Sci­en­tif­ic, “its orig­i­nal motive,” notes the pub­lish­er , “was to quan­tize the clas­si­cal action-at-a-dis­tance electrodynamics”—partly in response to the chal­lenges posed to his ear­ly lec­tures. In order to do this, says Toby, host of the video above, “he’ll need to come up with his own for­mu­la­tion of quan­tum mechan­ics, and he does this by first com­ing up with a new for­mu­la­tion in clas­si­cal mechan­ics,” which he must apply to quan­tum mechan­ics. “This turns out to be a bit of a chal­lenge.”

Feyn­man him­self found it insur­mount­able. “I nev­er solved it,” he writes in Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing , “a quan­tum the­o­ry of half-advanced, half-retard­ed potentials—and I worked on it for years.” But his “field-less elec­tro­dy­nam­ics” pos­sessed a “stu­pen­dous effi­cien­cy,” argues physi­cist Olivi­er Dar­rigol , that “appeared like mag­ic to most of his com­peti­tors.” The val­ue of this ear­ly work, says Toby, lies not in its abil­i­ty to solve the prob­lems it rais­es, but to come up with “a new way to approach things”—a method of con­tin­u­al search­ing that served him his entire career. He may have dis­card­ed many of the ideas in the the­sis, but his “mag­i­cal” think­ing would nonethe­less lead to lat­er mas­sive break­throughs like Feyn­man dia­grams .

Those who fol­low the math can do so in the fif­teen-minute video walk­through of the Feynman’s thesis—and read the the­sis in pdf form here . Toby lists sev­er­al sources on key con­cepts on the video’s YouTube page to get you up to speed. If the high-lev­el physics flies right over your head, learn more about how Feynman’s incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to learn and teach almost any sub­ject made him such a flex­i­ble and cre­ative thinker in Gleick’s book, Genius: The Life and Sci­ence of Richard Feyn­man .

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

Josh Jones  is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at  @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Comments (2) |

Related posts:

Comments (2), 2 comments so far.

hi tibee and josh. thanx for this nice piece and for call­ing the atten­tion to feyn­mans the­sis. always good to fol­low up on this great sci­en­tist and com­mu­ni­ca­tor (as you are too :). “No attempt is made at math­e­mat­i­cal rig­or.” p.8 :) stay safe!

Feyn­man would­n’t be cow­er­ing in fear over a virus. Whats with the bait and switch top­ic.

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Feynman’s Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory

by Laurie M Brown (ed.), World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812563660, £17 ($28). Paperback ISBN 9812563806, £9 ($14).

The title pretty much sums up this interesting short book, the latest Feynman work to be published since his death in 1988. It reproduces, in modern typeset, Feynman’s PhD thesis entitled “The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics”. In it Feynman outlined his brilliant reformulation of quantum mechanics in terms of the path integrals that now bear his name, together with two supporting papers and a preface.

Historians and physicists alike will enjoy this easy-to-read little book (119 pages plus the preface). Supplementing the thesis itself, which is just 69 pages long (if only all theses said so much in so little space), are reprints of Feynman’s “Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics”, which was published in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1948 and Paul Dirac’s “The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics”. Dirac’s paper is a little harder to find since it’s from the Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion and dates back to 1933. These provide excellent supporting material and in many ways bracket the thesis. Dirac’s paper is not as widely read as it should be, and is of great importance as it provided much of the initial impetus for Feynman’s work, making quite explicit the role of exp(iLdt/ħ) as a transition amplitude between states separated by an infinitesimal time dt, and its connection to the classical principle of least action. Feynman’s article is certainly well known and is perhaps rather more formal than the thesis itself, and therein lies much of charm of this book.

Brown also provides a 16 page introduction that essentially walks the reader through reading the thesis, summarizing the content of each section and adding many interesting historical anecdotes and quotations.

The thesis itself is a masterpiece of clear exposition. While there is little in the thesis that is likely to surprise most physicists, it is written in Feynman’s uniquely chatty style, and reminiscent of the famous Feynman lectures. It is a delight to read and is likely to offer an insight, even to non-physicists, into both physics and the workings of Feynman’s mind. I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone – working physicists, historians, philosophers and even “curious fellows” who would like to “peek over the shoulder” of one of the 20th century’s great physicists at work.

John Swain , Northeastern University.

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Feynman's Thesis - A New Approach To Quantum Theory

Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space-time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach used in the conventional formulations of quantum theory could not be used, so Feynman turned to the Lagrangian function and the principle of least action as his points of departure.

The result was the path integral approach, which satisfied -- and transcended -- its original motivation, and has enjoyed great success in renormalized quantum field theory, including the derivation of the ubiquitous Feynman diagrams for elementary particles. Path integrals have many other applications, including atomic, molecular, and nuclear scattering, statistical mechanics, quantum liquids and solids, Brownian motion, and noise theory. It also sheds new light on fundamental issues like the interpretation of quantum theory because of its new overall space-time viewpoint.

The present volume includes Feynman's Princeton thesis, the related review article "Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" [ Reviews of Modern Physics 20 (1948), 367-387], Paul Dirac's seminal paper "The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics'' [ Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, Band 3, Heft 1 (1933)], and an introduction by Laurie M Brown.

• ISBN-10 9812563806
• ISBN-13 978-9812563804
• Publisher WSPC
• Publication date August 24, 2005
• Language English
• Dimensions 6 x 0.33 x 9 inches
• Print length 144 pages
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ WSPC (August 24, 2005)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
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About the author

Richard p. feynman.

Richard P. Feynman was born in 1918 and grew up in Far Rockaway, New York. At the age of seventeen he entered MIT and in 1939 went to Princeton, then to Los Alamos, where he joined in the effort to build the atomic bomb. Following World War II he joined the physics faculty at Cornell, then went on to Caltech in 1951, where he taught until his death in 1988. He shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965, and served with distinction on the Shuttle Commission in 1986. A commemorative stamp in his name was issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2005.

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Richard Feynman

Notable works: selected scientific works.

Feynman, Richard P. (2000). Laurie M. Brown, ed. Selected Papers of Richard Feynman: With Commentary. 20th Century Physics. World Scientific.

Feynman, Richard P. (1942). Laurie M. Brown, ed. The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University. World Scientific (with title Feynman's Thesis: a New Approach to Quantum Theory) (published 2005).

Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P. (1945). "Interaction with the Absorber as the Mechanism of Radiation". Rev. Mod. Phys. 17 (2–3): 157–181.

Feynman, Richard P. (1946). A Theorem and its Application to Finite Tampers. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission.

Feynman, Richard P.; Welton, T. A. (1946). Neutron Diffusion in a Space Lattice of Fissionable and Absorbing Materials. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission.

Feynman, Richard P.; Metropolis, N.; Teller, E. (1947). Equations of State of Elements Based on the Generalized Fermi-Thomas Theory. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission.

Feynman, Richard P. (1948a). "Space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics". Rev. Mod. Phys. 20 (2): 367–387.

Feynman, Richard P. (1948b). "Relativistic Cut-Off for Quantum Electrodynamics". Physical Review 74 (10): 1430–1438.

Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P. (1949). "Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action". Rev. Mod. Phys. 21 (3): 425–433.

Feynman, Richard P. (1949). "The theory of positrons". Phys. Rev. 76 (6): 749–759.

Feynman, Richard P. (1949b). "Space-Time Approach to Quantum Electrodynamic". Phys. Rev. 76 (6): 769–789.

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Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory

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Why did Feynman's thesis almost work?

A bit of background helps frame this question. The question itself is in the last sentence.

For his PhD thesis, Richard Feynman and his thesis adviser John Archibald Wheeler devised an astonishingly strange approach to explaining electron-electron interactions without using a field. Their solution was to take the everyday retarded wave solution to Maxwell's equations and mix it 50/50 with the advanced (backwards in time) solution that up until then had always been discarded as "obviously" violating temporal causality. In a series of papers they showed that this was not the case, and that the recoil of an electron when it emits a photon could self-consistently be explained as the result of an advanced photon traveling backwards in time and impacting the electron at the same instant in which the electron emits a forward-in-time photon.

While Feynman's thesis ideas deeply influenced his subsequent development of QED, e.g. in QED's backwards-in-time interpretation of antimatter electrons (positrons). Feynman in a letter to Wheeler later famously retracted (well, famously for some of us) the specific idea of paired photons traveling forwards and backwards in time. Feynman's specific reason for abandoning his thesis premise was vacuum polarization, which cannot be explained by direct electron-to-electron interactions. (Vacuum polarization is easily accommodated by QED, however.)

Feynman's abandonment of the original Feynman/Wheeler retarded/advanced photon scheme has always troubled me. The reason is this: If their original idea was completely invalid, the probability from an information correlation perspective of the idea leading to accurate predictions of how physics operates should have been vanishingly small. Instead, their oddly arbitrary 50/50 mix of real waves and hypothesized backwards-in-time waves almost works, all the way down to the minute length scales at which vacuum polarization becomes significant. One analogy is that the Feynman/Wheeler scheme behaves like a slightly broken mathematical symmetry, one that correctly describes reality over almost the entire range of phenomena to which it applies, but then breaks down at one of the extrema of its range.

My question, finally, is this: Does there exist a clear conceptual explanation, perhaps in the QED description of vacuum polarization for example, of why the Feynman/Wheeler retarded/advanced model of paired photons traveling two directions in time provides an accurate model of reality overall, despite its being incorrect when applied at very short distances?

Addendum 2012-05-30

If I've understood @RonMaimon correctly -- and I certainly still do not fully understand the S-matrix part of his answer -- his central answer to my question is both simple and highly satisfying: Feynman did not abandon the backward-forward scheme at all, but instead abandoned the experimentally incorrect idea that an electron cannot interact with itself. So, his objection to Wheeler could perhaps be paraphrased in a more upbeat form into something more like this: "Vacuum polarization shows that the electron does indeed interact with itself, so I was wrong about that. But your whole backwards-and-forwards in time idea works very well indeed -- I got a Nobel Prize for it -- so thank for pointing me in that direction!"

Answer to Ron, and my thanks.

• quantum-electrodynamics
• maxwell-equations

• 2 $\begingroup$ Very nice question. I've read more in detail about the Feynman-Wheeler approach in the book "Action at a Distance in Physics and Cosmology" by Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar . They build up a theory of gravity in the same spirit as the Feynman-Wheeler theory. It does not seem to fit observations though. $\endgroup$ –  Raskolnikov Commented May 10, 2012 at 13:05
• 1 $\begingroup$ (i) The idea of using half-retarded half-advanced potentials goes back to Dirac. (ii) Far from what you believe, self-interacting electrons are not experimentally proved. What we test in experiments are real electrons which do not interact with themselves. More info in my comment to @Ron. $\endgroup$ –  juanrga Commented Nov 2, 2012 at 20:57
• $\begingroup$ Carver Mead , a Feynman student, never abandonned the Feynman/Wheeler view. He calls his theory "Collective electrodynamics". $\endgroup$ –  Stéphane Rollandin Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 7:59
• $\begingroup$ This is related to Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. $\endgroup$ –  PM 2Ring Commented Jan 7, 2018 at 9:25
• $\begingroup$ @PM2Ring thanks, good ref. I've promoted a quantum-as-atemporal perspective for well over a decade ( vokrugsveta.ru/telegraph/theory/754 ), to the point that my elevator explanation of quantum mechanics is "Physics for which no specific history -- no external information -- has yet been assigned." I also call this ragged-edged time, since it means that even though self-observation in thermodynamic matter (e.g. us) creates sharp, crisp local definitions of "now", quantum phenomena create regions where time lags and stays undefined, possibly for very long periods of classical time. $\endgroup$ –  Terry Bollinger Commented Jan 7, 2018 at 16:00

2 Answers 2

The main important idea of Feynman Wheeler theory is to use propagators which are non-causal, that can go forward and backward in time. This makes no sense in the Hamiltonian framework, since the backward in time business requires a formalism that is not rigidly stepping from timestep to timestep. Once you give up on a Hamiltonian, you can also ask that the formalism be manifestly relativistically invariant. This led Feynman to the Lagrangian formalism, and the path integral.

The only reason the Feynman Wheeler idea doesn't work is simply because of the arbitrary idea that an electron doesn't act on itself , and this is silly. Why can't an electron emit and later absorb the same photon? Forbidding this is ridiculous, and creates a nonsense theory. This is why Feynman says he abandons the theory. But this was the motivating idea--- to get rid of the classical infinity by forbidding self-interaction. But the result was much deeper than the motivating idea.

Feynman never abandons the non-causal propagator, this is essential to the invariant particle picture that he creates later. But later, he makes a similar non-causal propagator for electrons, and figures out how to couple the quantum electrons to the photon without using local fields explicitly, beyond getting the classical limit right. This is a major tour-de-force, since he is essentially deriving QED from the requirement of relativistic invariance, unitarity, the spin of the photon and electron, plus gauge-invariance/minimal coupling (what we would call today the requirement of renormalizability). These arguments have been streamlined and extended since by Weiberg, you derive a quantum field theory from unitarity, relativistic invariance, plus a postulate on a small number of fundamental particles with a given spin<1.

In Feynman's full modern formalism, the propagators still go forward and backward in time just like the photon in Wheeler-Feynman, the antiparticle goes backward, and the particle forward (the photon is its own antiparticle). The original motivation for these discoveries is glossed over by Feynman a little, they come from Wheeler's focus on the S-matrix as the correct physical observable. Wheeler discovered the S-matrix in 1938, and always emphasized S-matrix centered computations. Feynman never was so gung-ho on S-matrix, and became an advocate of Schwinger style local fields, once he understood that the particle and field picture are complementary. He felt that the focus on S-matrix made him work much harder than he had to, he could have gotten the same results much easier (as Schwinger and Dyson did) using the extra physics of local fields.

So the only part of Wheeler-Feynman that Feynman abandoned is the idea that particles don't interact with themselves. Other than that, the Feynman formalism for QED is pretty much mathematically identical to the Wheeler-Feynman formalism for classical electrodynamics, except greatly expanded and correctly quantum. If Feynman hadn't started with backward in time propagation, it isn't clear the rest would have been so easy to formulate. The mathematical mucking around with non-causal propagators did produce the requisite breakthrough.

It must be noted that Schwinger also had the same non-causal propagators, which he explicitly parametrized by the particle proper time. He arrived at it by a different path, from local fields. However they were both scooped by Stueckelberg, who was the true father of the modern methods, and who was neglected for no good reason. Stueckelberg was also working with local fields. It was only Feynman, following Wheeler, who derived this essentially from a pure S-matrix picture, and the equivalence of the result to local fields made him and many others sure that S-matrix and local fields are simply two complementary ways to describe relativistic quantum physics.

This is not true, as string theory shows. There are pure S-matrix theories that are not equivalent to local quantum fields. Feynman was skeptical of strings, because they were S-matrix, and he didn't like S-matrix, having been burned by it in this way.

• 2 $\begingroup$ This answer could be improved vastly if you could add references in the style of user Qmechanic. $\endgroup$ –  Physiks lover Commented May 11, 2012 at 14:20
• 2 $\begingroup$ Ron, I think @Physikslover was interested in your answer, not trying to disparage it. You have a lot of concepts and thoughts in it, many of them far from trivial. $\endgroup$ –  Terry Bollinger Commented May 12, 2012 at 0:49
• 5 $\begingroup$ @TerryBollinger: It is impossible for Feynman to have been cribbing, because Stueckelberg does it Schwinger's way, while Feynman derives everything from unitarity, and is not sure he is doing field theory! It was only when Feynman met Schwinger and compared notes that he realized his stuff was equivalent to local fields, and even then, he wasn't comfortable fully with local fields until the mid 1950s. Stueckelberg's work was recognized early by Pauli, and Einstein named Pauli his successor on his death in 1955, but Pauli dies a few years later, and this shakes Schwinger deeply. Schwinger quits $\endgroup$ –  Ron Maimon Commented May 12, 2012 at 5:45
• 7 $\begingroup$ smoking, starts exercising, loses weight (and lives til his 70s). Schwinger might have read Stueckelberg. Stueckelberg continues to make insanely advanced contributions that are ripped off left and right--- he discovers affine Higgs mechanism (years before Brout and Englert, but abelian), the renormalization group (but it's Gell-Mann and Low that isolate the essential scaling part--- and cite him), and more. He dies extremely depressed from neglect, and borderline insane. It's a terrible story, and it happens again and again in physics. Hopefully the internet will put an end to this nonsense. $\endgroup$ –  Ron Maimon Commented May 12, 2012 at 17:28
• 3 $\begingroup$ @juanrga: That's not true. Both dressed and bare electrons interact with their own self field, this cannot be removed in a quantum theory, because you need to include loops where the electron emits a photon, emits a second photon, and absorbs the first photon (only the k-independent part of this is absorbed in the charge renormalization, which is the only difference between bare and dressed). There is no way to forbid electrons from absorbing their own photons, because the photons don't come with a label saying which electron emitted them. It's not consistent, and it's silly. $\endgroup$ –  Ron Maimon Commented Nov 2, 2012 at 21:08

Drawing from Feynman's and Wheeler's memoirs:

Feynman was originally motivated to produce a theory of EM without the infinities of self-interaction, but he then needed a mechanism to reproduce radiation reaction, the loss of energy of an accelerating electron. He thought that a nearby electron could back-react to achieve the effect, but his advisor Wheeler pointed out the problems with that idea (time delay, attenuation, etc.)

However, Wheeler suggested that, if the advanced as well as the retarded wave solutions of Maxwell's equations were taken seriously, one must then take account of "the presence in the universe of a nearly infinite number of other objects containing electric charge, all of which can participate in a grand symphony of absorption and reemission of signals going both forward and backward in time." (You can tell that's Wheeler's prose, right?)

• the original shaking electron produces retarded and advanced waves, which
• shake every other charged particle in the universe, both later and earlier than the original shake.
• All those other shaken particles in turn radiate advanced and retarded waves.
• The advanced waves from the "later" shakes, and the retarded waves from the "earlier" shakes arrive back at the original source electron exactly at the time of its shaking, and sum to exactly the right amplitude to produce the radiation reaction, and no other observable effects. (Taking their word for it, although I can see how the distance attenuation could be compensated by the increasing number of particles with distance.)

I think Wheeler would say that it's "oddly arbitrary" to only include the retarded solutions: since advanced waves are also perfectly good solutions of the equations, a 50/50 split is the natural choice.

[I'm puzzled that Wheeler was pursuing a theory without fields (no EM degrees of freedom), yet still working with Maxwell's equations. Feynman, on the other hand, only mentions losing the infinite self-interactions as motivation.]

• $\begingroup$ Art, that's a good summary. On your last point, Feynman really, really wanted to solve the electron infinite self-energy problem, and decided quite early to approach it by assuming that particles only interacted directly: never with themselves, and never through fields. Wheeler then helped him, including pointing out that Feynman's first attempt was ordinary reflection! It as Wheeler (who else?) who came up with the amazing and truly weird time interpretation. And that to me is the deep mystery: It doesn't sound like something that should even come close to reality -- yet it does, almost . $\endgroup$ –  Terry Bollinger Commented May 29, 2012 at 2:17
• $\begingroup$ @TerryBollinger: Thank you. You are of course right (re ditching the fields). I've since read Feynman's nobel lecture, where he said as much. I think he shared your appreciation of the deep mystery that apparently completely different approaches to a problem can give the same result. $\endgroup$ –  Art Brown Commented May 30, 2012 at 16:37

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75 years of the path integral formulation

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Nature Reviews Physics volume  5 ,  page 321 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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In what has to be one of the clearest abstracts ever written, Richard Feynman put it simply thus: “Non-relativistic quantum mechanics is formulated here in a different way. It is, however, mathematically equivalent to the familiar formulation.”

The abstract goes on: “The probability that a particle will be found to have a path x ( t ) lying somewhere within a region of space time is the square of the sum of contributions, one from each path in the region. The contribution from a single path is postulated to be an exponential whose (imaginary) phase is the classical action (in units of ħ ) for the path in question.” Feynman was moving away from the idea of a single, classical trajectory for a system, and instead thinking quantum mechanically about all possible trajectories, summing over all possible paths — the path integral formulation. Then, he concludes, “The total contribution from all paths reaching x , t from the past is the wave function Ψ ( x , t ). This is shown to satisfy Schrödinger’s equation.”

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Original article

Feynman, R. P. Space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 20 , 367–387 (1948)

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Dyson, F. J. The radiation theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger, and Feynman. Phys. Rev. 75 , 486–502 (1949)

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Wright, A. 75 years of the path integral formulation. Nat Rev Phys 5 , 321 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00601-3

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Feynman This is What Richard Feynman's PhD Thesis Looks Like: A Video Introduction The Feynman Technique Learn the way Feynman did VIDEO The Feynman propagator and self-adjointness, A. Vasy (Stanford University) RICHARD FEYNMAN`S QUANTUM MECHANICS #shorts Feynman This method is known as the Feynman Technique! #study #studytips #studymotivation #astheticstudy I got a Feyn Book FEYNMAN's crazy PROOF !!!! Gamma Function Property COMMENTS PDF Feynman's Thesis Quantizing the Wheeler Feynman theory (Feynman's PhD thesis): The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics Having an action-at-a-distance classical theory of electromagnetic interactions without fields, except as an auxiliary device, the ques-tion arises as to how to make a corresponding quantum theory. Feynman's Thesis Feynman's Thesis — A New Approach to Quantum Theory. Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance ... Collection: Richard P. Feynman Papers The Richard Phillips Feynman Papers were given to Caltech by Richard Feynman and Gweneth Feynman in two main installments. The first group of papers, now boxes 1-20 of the collection, was donated by Richard Feynman himself beginning in 1968, with additions later. It contains materials dating from about 1933 to 1970. Feynman's thesis [electronic resource] : a new approach to quantum Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics, " its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space-time ... Feynman's thesis: A new approach to quantum theory Abstract. Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action ... This is What Richard Feynman's PhD Thesis Looks Like: A Video This is What Richard Feynman's PhD Thesis Looks Like: A Video Introduction. in Physics | April 2nd, 2020 2 Comments. Richard Feyn­man wasn't just an "ordi­nary genius.". He was, accord­ing to math­e­mati­cian Mark Kac "in his tax­on­o­my of the two types of genius­es," a "magi­cian" and "a cham­pi­on of sci­en ... Feynman's Thesis : A New Approach to Quantum Theory Richard FeynmanOCOs never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled OC The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics, OCO its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall spaceOCotime viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian ... Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory Paperback ISBN 9812563806, £9 ($14). The title pretty much sums up this interesting short book, the latest Feynman work to be published since his death in 1988. It reproduces, in modern typeset, Feynman's PhD thesis entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics". In it Feynman outlined his brilliant reformulation of ... Feynman's Thesis The present volume includes Feynman's Princeton thesis, the related review article "Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" [Reviews of Modern Physics 20 (1948), 367-387], Paul Dirac's seminal paper "The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics'' [Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, Band 3, Heft 1 (1933)], and an introduction ... PDF P. A. M. Dirac Quantizing the Wheeler Feynman theory (Feynman's PhD thesis): The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics Having an action-at-a-distance classical theory of electromagnetic interactions without fields, except as an auxiliary device, the ques-tion arises as to how to make a corresponding quantum theory. The Official Site of Richard Feynman Feynman, Richard P. (2000). Laurie M. Brown, ed. Selected Papers of Richard Feynman: With Commentary. 20th Century Physics. ... Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University. World Scientific (with title Feynman's Thesis: a New Approach to Quantum Theory) (published 2005). Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P. (1945). "Interaction with the Absorber ... Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory For the energy expression, classically y (σ) = q̇ (σ). The formula (60) can be deduced from (70) most simply by writing for y i the f44 Feynman's Thesis — A New Approach to Quantum Theory % i+1 −qi qi −qi−1 & + form, yi = 21 qti+1 −ti ti −ti−1 in the case that the coordinates are rectangular. This is what Feynman's PhD thesis looks like Unfortunately, the free PDF link to the thesis on the CERN website has recently stopped working. You may find alternate copies through your own library under... Feynman's Thesis 'Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space-time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach ... Why did Feynman's thesis almost work? For his PhD thesis, Richard Feynman and his thesis adviser John Archibald Wheeler devised an astonishingly strange approach to explaining electron-electron interactions without using a field. Their solution was to take the everyday retarded wave solution to Maxwell's equations and mix it 50/50 with the advanced (backwards in time) solution that ... ‪Richard Feynman‬ RP Feynman, M Gell-Mann. Physical Review 109 (1), 193, 1958. 3700: 1958: QED: The strange theory of light and matter. RP Feyman. Universities Press, 1985. 3563 * 1985: The theory of a general quantum system interacting with a linear dissipative system. RP Feynman, FL Vernon. Annals of physics 24, 118-173, 1963. Feynman's Thesis : A New Approach to Quantum Theory Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled ?The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space?time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach used ... 75 years of the path integral formulation Feynman had first started down this track in his 1942 PhD thesis, under John Wheeler, entitled The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics. A key motivation now was to quantize Wheeler ... Does Richard Feynman Dream of Electric Sheep? Topics on Quantum Field Abstract. In this thesis, we mainly discuss three topics in theoretical physics: a proof of the weak gravity conjecture, a basic statement in the string theory landscape using the black hole entropy, solving the critical O(3) model using the conformal bootstrap method involving semidefinite programming, and numerical simulation of the false vacuum decay using tensor network methods. The doctoral students of Richard Feynman A direct search of the school's online database produces a list of 25 PhD theses in which Feynman is described as the adviser or co-adviser. By way of comparison, a direct search for his Caltech colleague Murray Gell-Mann as adviser turns up 16 theses. Zweig, along with Henry Hilton and Michael Levine, were co-advised by Feynman and Gell-Mann. Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (/ ˈ f aɪ n m ə n /; May 11, 1918 - February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST ACTION IN QUANTUM MECHANICS The Exigencies of War and the Stink of a Theoretical Problem: Understanding the Genesis of Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics as Mechanistic Modelling at Different Levels Adrian Wüthrich 1 Aug 2018 | Perspectives on Science, Vol. 26, No. 4 Feynman Thesis Functional Feynman Thesis Functional - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. This document introduces Richard Feynman's thesis on a new approach to quantum theory using the principle of least action. It discusses how functionals associate a number to a function and can be viewed as functions of an infinite number of variables. Feynman's Thesis : A New Approach to Quantum Theory Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space-time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach used ... assignment essay homework paper phd report review speech thesis