Lot 76
  • 76

FEYNMAN, RICHARD P. DRAFT FOR TALK AT CONFERENCE ON ELECTROSTATIC AND HIGH-ENERGY ACCELERATORS AT MIT, 1948

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Description

  • "[I] Would like to talk about what new Q.[uantum] Electr.[rodynamics] predicts....", ca May, 1948.
Autograph manuscript, together 4 pp (8 1/2 x 11 in) with 3pp consisting primarily of diagrams and calculations in black ink on rectos & verso of the 12 May 1948 Final Announcement of Conference on Electrostatic and High-Energy Accelerators at MIT, & 1 p being the draft of the talk corresponding to the diagrams, in black ink on ruled paper. Apparently a draft for a paper to be presented at said conference.

Catalogue Note

DRAFT FOR AN EARLY, EXPERIMENTALLY-MOTIVATED CONFERENCE TALK ON QED, A YEAR BEFORE PUBLICATION OF HIS SEMINAL PAPER “SPACE-TIME APPROACH TO QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS” AND 17 YEARS BEFORE HE WOULD WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR HIS WORK ON THIS SUBJECT. A wonderful early item, giving us great insight into Feynman's thought processes during a critical moment in the development of his new quantum electrodynamics, shortly after the famed Pocono Conference of late March 1948 when Julian Schwinger’s competing approach to QED held sway, and likely preceding Feynman’s legendary cross-country road-trip that June with Freeman Dyson, who later explained the equivalence of the two complementary approaches (Gleick, pp. 262-266). The diagrams drawn on the conference program represent the key physical processes constituting crucial experimental tests of QED: i) Compton effect; i.e., the inelastic scattering of electrons by hard x-rays, ii) Bremsstrahlung- “braking radiation,” emitted by rapidly decelerated electrons and, finally, iii) the production of electron-positron pairs by high-energy gamma rays. Feynman at the time was a professor of theoretical physics at Cornell University and it was this work that would lead to his being awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The text begins: "[I] Would like to talk about what new Q.[uantum] Electr.[odynamics] predicts that might be looked for. Many problems have not yet been worked out. One is motion of electron in Coulomb field. First effect 13 volts. Accuracy vs. energy!... Typical high energy, Pairs, Bremsstrahlung, Compton effect, elect -elect. scatt..."

As with much of Feynman's oeuvre, we can locate no published version of this talk.