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 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."

"The Selected Papers of Richard Feynman should become a fixture on the bookshelf of every physicist "
David Goodstein
Caltech

"This reprint volume, with commentary by Laurie Brown, will be appreciated by experts and junior scientists alike "
Edwin Salpeter
Cornell University

"Brown's commentaries placing the papers in their historical context are most helpful and constitute a valuable addition to the collection "
Sam Schweber
Brandeis University

"Feynman's reputation ultimately rests on his major contributions to science, which this book amply documents such a selection of key papers is a useful reference."
CERN Courier, 2001

"This book has an excellent chronological bibliography of Feynman's work "
Choice, Jul 2001

"Anyone with the smallest interest in physics learns that Feynman was a great physicist, on a historic scale. What might come as a surprise is that his original papers maintain a special freshness and life even today. He always tried to construct his own version of physics, from the ground up, squeezing the maximum of insight from the minimum of formalism. In his greatest successes, including path integrals, the modern version of quantum electrodynamics, and the parton model, he achieves a combination of originality, simplicity, and power that is like Mozart's best music, a reliable source of refreshment and inspiration. But even his lesser works contain unique material. The path-integral variational principle, the ordered operator calculus, and the influence functional, for example, are nowhere better presented than in Feynman's original papers, and they may be capable of much further development."
Frank Wilczek
MIT

"One cannotfail to be impressed by the range and quality of Feynman's work represented in this book, and to take pleasure in his distinctive, lucid and incisive style. Although a selection has been made, it is sufficiently broad to provide insight into the breadth of Feynman's interests in addition to including his many definitive papers."
Contemporary Physics, 2002

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.