Wilson, Kenneth G.

Wilson, Kenneth G. (Geddes)

(1936– ) physicist; born in Waltham, Mass. He was a fellow at Harvard (1959–62) and CERN, Geneva (1962–63). He moved to Cornell (1963–88), then joined Ohio State (1988). He won the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics for using the mathematical process of renormalization to explain phase transitions of matter. His later work involved applying renormalization to quark theory and computer simulations.