Arthur Wightman

Who was Arthur Wightman?

Arthur Strong Wightman was an American mathematical physicist. He was one of the founders of the axiomatic approach to quantum field theory, and originated the set of Wightman axioms.

Advised by John Wheeler, his 1949 Princeton doctoral dissertation was entitled The Moderation and Absorption of Negative Pions in Hydrogen. His graduate students include Arthur Jaffe, Jerrold Marsden, and Alan Sokal. His work is summarized in the classic concise monograph PCT, Spin and statistics and all that written with R F Streater. Its title is a play on 1066 and All That, the historical satire by Sellar and Yeatman. The PCT refers to the combined symmetry of a quantum field theory under P Parity, C charge and T time. Spin and statistics refers to the fact that in quantum field theory it can be proved that spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics whereas integer spin 0, 1, 2 particles obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

Wightman was awarded the Henri Poincaré Prize of the International Association of Mathematical Physics in 1997. Until his death, he was a professor emeritus at Princeton.