Overview

Very few people have contributed as much to twentieth-century physics as Julian Schwinger. It is therefore appropriate to offer a retrospective of his work on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (February 12, 1978). We hope, in offering this selection of his papers, to bring to light ideas and results that may have been partly overlooked at the time of the original publication. Schwinger has published prodigiously on a great variety of subjects, as is evident from the comprehensive list of publications arranged in chronological order which appears on p. xiii. Needless to say, only a small subset could be included in the present modest volume. In the selection, great weight was assigned to papers that seem to be less widely known or appreciated than they deserve. Many important papers are therefore omitted. (Examples: Paper [64] 'On Gauge Invariance and Vacuum Polarization' and Paper [69] 'On Angular Momentum', both of which have been reprinted elsewhere. ) The collection is a personal one, having been chosen by Schwinger himself, and is therefore of particular interest. It would probably not be interesting to offer an analysis, by the editors, of Schwinger's contributions to physics. However, we are very pleased to be able to include Schwinger's own informal and very personal comments about each article that appears in this volume. These comments indicate his reasons for choosing these particular articles and, in many cases, provide a capsule synopsis of what he considers most valuable.