William A. Bardeen

Who is William A. Bardeen?

William Allen Bardeen is an American theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is the son of John Bardeen and Jane Maxwell Bardeen.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1962, Bardeen earned his Ph.D. Degree in Physics from the University of Minnesota in 1968. Following research appointments at S.U.N.Y at Stony Brook and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was an Assistant and Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Stanford University. In 1975, Bardeen joined the staff of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory where he has served as Head of the Theoretical Physics Department. During 1993-1994, he was Head of Theoretical Physics at the SSC Laboratory before its termination.

Bardeen is co-inventor of the theory of the axial vector current anomaly which is of foundational importance in modern theoretical physics. He developed with Stephen L. Adler the "non-renormalization theorem". He has played a major role in the development of perturbation theory for quantum chromodynamics, and dynamical approaches to electroweak symmetry breaking. Bardeen is considered one of the leading authorities on quantum field theory and its application to the phenomena of elementary particle physics.