The Oldstone Conference of 11 to 14 April 1949 was the third of three postwar conferences held to discuss quantum physics; arranged for the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...

, who was again chairman. It followed the

Shelter Island Conference The first Shelter Island Conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics was held from June 2–4, 1947 at the Ram's Head Inn in Shelter Island, New York. Shelter Island was the first major opportunity since Pearl Harbor and the Manhattan P ...

of 1947 and the Pocono Conference of 1948. There were 24 participants; new participants were Robert Christie,

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrix, random matrices, math ...

(whose writings explained Feynman’s ideas), George Placzek, and

Hideki Yukawa Hideki Yukawa (; ; 23 January 1907 – 8 September 1981) was a Japanese theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces". B ...

. Held at Oldstone-on-the-Hudson in

Peekskill, New York Peekskill is a city in northwestern Westchester County, New York, United States, north of New York City. Established as a village in 1816, it was incorporated as a city in 1940. It lies on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across fr ...

, the main talking-point was

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

’s approach to quantum electrodynamics (QED); Feynman was now (at 30) the leading physicist of his generation. Gribbin (1997) p. 118

References

* * Physics conferences History of science and technology in the United States Foundational quantum physics 1949 in science 1949 in the United States 1949 conferences Science events in the United States April 1949 in the United States {{quantum-stub

See also

References