Quantum field theory was originally developed for the treatment of electrodynamics, immediately after the completion of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the Dirac equation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics.
During my years at the synchrotron laboratory, I had become interested in the theory of quantum electrodynamics and had decided that what I would most like to do after completing my dissertation work was to probe the short-distance behavior of the electromagnetic interaction.
Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
When I was at Berkeley, the framework of quantum field theory could calculate the dynamics of electromagnetism. It could roughly describe the motion of the weak nuclear force, radiation. But it hit a brick wall with the strong interaction, the binding force.
Since the founding of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, theoretical physics had nurtured an extremely radical tradition.
I had set out to disprove quantum field theory - and the opposite occurred! I was shocked.
Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.
The problem is that replacement of Quantum Mechanics by Quantum Field Theory is still very demanding.
The application of group theory to physics became one of the main branches of physics that I specialized in.
In 1956, when I began doing theoretical physics, the study of elementary particles was like a patchwork quilt. Electrodynamics, weak interactions, and strong interactions were clearly separate disciplines, separately taught and separately studied. There was no coherent theory that described them all.