Notable awards FRS (1981) | ||
Born 4 August 1930 (age 86) ( 1930-08-04 ) Fields mathematical physicstheoretical physics Institutions University of OxfordUniversity of Cambridge Doctoral advisors Richard J. EdenAbdus Salam Doctoral students Paul FramptonJohn HarnadDavid OliveDouglas RossRaymond Streater Books Hidden Unity in Nature's, Gauge Theories of Weak Inte, From Modernization to Modes, Wildlife in India's Tiger Kin Similar | ||
John Clayton Taylor FRS (born 4 August 1930) is a British mathematical physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College.
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Education
Taylor earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1956, under the supervision of Richard J. Eden and Abdus Salam. His thesis was entitled Renormalisation and related topics in quantum field theory.
Research
Taylor has made contributions to the quantum field theory and the physics of elementary particles. His early works include: the discovery (also made independently by Lev Landau) of singularities in the analytical structure of the Feynman integrals for processes in quantum field theory; and the discovery in 1971 of the so-called Slavnov–Taylor identities, which control symmetry and renormalisation of gauge theories.
With various collaborators, in 1980 he discovered that real and virtual infrared divergences do not cancel in QCD as they do in QED. They also showed how these infrared divergences exponentiate. In addition, they contributed to the resummation programme in thermal QCD, simplifying the "hard" part of the effective action. Later, they studied complications arising from the non-polynomial nature of the QCD Hamiltonian in the (unitary) Coulomb gauge.
Books
Awards and honours
Taylor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1981. His certificate of election reads: