Felix Villars
| Felix Villars | |
|---|---|
| Born |
6 January 1921 Biel, Switzerland |
| Died | 27 April 2002 (aged 81) Belmont, Massachusetts |
| Alma mater | ETH Zurich |
| Known for | Pauli–Villars regularization |
| Spouse(s) | Jacqueline Dubois |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | ETH Zurich, Institute for Advanced Study, MIT |
| Doctoral advisor | Gregor Wentzel |
| Doctoral students | David Finkelstein |
Felix Villars (French: [vilaʁ]; 6 January 1921 – 27 April 2002) was a Swiss-born American emeritus professor of physics at MIT. He is best known for the Pauli–Villars regularization, an important principle in quantum field theory.
Villars was born in Biel, Switzerland and served in the Swiss Army during the Second World War, working as a meteorologist. In 1945, he graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with degrees in physics and mathematics. His undergraduate thesis earned him the Institute's Kern Medal for Excellence. The following year, Villars earned his doctorate in physics from the same institution.
From 1946 to 1949, Villars worked as a research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute. While there, he collaborated with Wolfgang Pauli on work in quantum electrodynamics. They developed a method of dealing with mathematical singularities in quantum field theory, in order to extract finite physical results. This method, Pauli–Villars regularization, is used by physicists when working with field theory.
In 1949, Villars married the former Jacqueline Dubois and moved to the United States. He worked for a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
In 1950, Villars was hired as a research associate at MIT and eventually became a full professor in 1959. Along with Victor Weisskopf, he studied the scattering of radio waves owing to atmospheric turbulence. With Herman Feshbach, he studied the effect of the Earth's magnetic field on the ionosphere.
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