Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space-time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach used in the conventional formulations of quantum theory could not be used, so Feynman turned to the Lagrangian function and the principle of least action as his points of departure. The result was the path integral approach, which satisfied - and transcended - its original motivation, and has enjoyed great success in renormalized quantum field theory, including the derivation of the ubiquitous Feynman diagrams for elementary particles. Path integrals have many other applications, including atomic, molecular, and nuclear scattering, statistical mechanics, quantum liquids and solids, Brownian motion, and noise theory. It also sheds new light on fundamental issues like the interpretation of quantum theory because of its new overall space-time viewpoint. The present volume includes Feynman's Princeton thesis, the related review article "Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" Reviews of Modern Physics 20 (1948), 367-387], Paul Dirac's seminal paper "The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics'' Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, Band 3, Heft 1 (1933)], and an introduction by Laurie M Brown.

This is Yukawa's autobiography of his early years, written in Japanese when he was fifty years old. It describes his family background and the education and experience, both social and intellectual, that helped to form his character and direct his career. Especially valuable to the historian of science are his discussions of scientific relationships with his colleague Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, with his teacher Yoshio Nishina, and with his students (who later became his collaborators): Sakata, Taketani, and Kobayashi. The Story ends with the writing of his first scientific paper in English, being the birth of the meson theory of nuclear forces. Also included are the original paper of the meson theory by Prof H Yukawa and an introduction by Prof L M Brown.

This is Yukawa's autobiography of his early years, written in Japanese when he was fifty years old. It describes his family background and the education and experience, both social and intellectual, that helped to form his character and direct his career. Especially valuable to the historian of science are his discussions of scientific relationships with his colleague Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, with his teacher Yoshio Nishina, and with his students (who later became his collaborators): Sakata, Taketani, and Kobayashi. The Story ends with the writing of his first scientific paper in English, being the birth of the meson theory of nuclear forces. Also included are the original paper of the meson theory by Prof H Yukawa and an introduction by Prof L M Brown.

This second Series A volume of Werner Heisenberg's Collected Works covers a period of about 15 years beginning with the early papers on quantum field theory in 1929/30 and ending with those on the scattering matrix (up to 1946). The reader will find Heisenberg contributions to Dirac's theory of the electron, to nuclear physics, to cosmic ray phenomena, and to reactor physics. The papers on the Uranium Project, classified for a long time and never fully published before, will certainly attract a wide audience. As in the first volume, each group of papers is furnished with an introduction in English by an eminent scientist. The contributing scientists are: R. Haag, A. Pais, C.F. von Weizsacker, E. Bagge, K. Wirtz, and R. Oehme."

Editors Laurie Brown and Lillian Hoddeson have brought together a distinctive collection of essays, discussions, and personal descriptions of the evolution of particle physics based on the presentations and discussions at the May 1980 International Symposium on the History of Particle Physics, held at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. This collection focuses primarily on the development of cosmic-ray physics and quantum field theory in the 1930s and 1940s, before the advent of the great postwar accelerators, and draws on research conducted in the United States, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, and the USSR.