Ken Wilson — The Early Years ∗

Ken Wilson’s life-time achievements in fundamental theoretical physics are well known and are well documented in this memorial volume. Therefore, there is no purpose in my adding yet another appreciation of his seminal work. Rather, I shall describe Ken and some of his activities at the beginning of his career, when he was junior faculty at Cornell and I was his student — one of two in the first cohort of PhDs that he mentored. (The other was Gerald Estberg, long time faculty and now retired at the University of San Diego.) I entered Cornell’s physics PhD program, hoping to study with Hans Bethe. But he decided to leave elementary particle physics and remain with nuclear physics. Another eminent theorist, specializing in S-matrix/Regge theory, left Ithaca for the West Coast. Consequently a position was offered to Ken, and in 1963 he accepted, partially “because Cornell was a good university, was out in the country and [had] a good folk dancing group.”[1].We graduate students were not familiar with his work because none was published. Evidently he got the job solely on his reputation among senior colleagues as a brilliantly unique quantum field theorist. Perhaps this disappointed some, who wished to follow the then-dominant S-matrix approach. But I was delighted, because my ambition was to master quantum field theory. We were bemused by Ken’s dedicated work habits: One could find him in office most of the time; otherwise he resided in a motel room. We were again bemused two years later when he won tenure after two publications. He attended our parties and other informal gatherings. His interactions were marked by very deliberate responses to conversational gambits. One frequently had to wait some moments before he responded; when an answer came it was complete — there was nothing more to say.