Eugene Paul Wigner

Eugene Wigner was one of a generation of physicists of the 1920's who remade the world of physics. After Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger and Paul Dirac had created quantum mechanics, Wigner was in a distinguished group of younger physicists who scrambled to answer the fundamental questions which quantum mechanics posed.

Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics. In the late 1930s, he extended his research into atomic nuclei. He developed an important general theory of nuclear reactions. He was brilliant as a theorist (see for instance the [Wigner-Eckart theorem]?), brilliant in the laboratory, and had a deep understanding of engineering as well.

Though a professed political amateur, in 1939 and 1940, Dr. Wigner played a major role in agitating for a Manhattan Project, a project by the United States government to make an atomic bomb to use against Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Wigner always thought of his work on the atomic bomb as essentially defensive, and he would later become a major figure in the field of civil defense.

Near the end of his life his thought turned more philosophical. In his memoir, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, published when he was almost 90, Eugene Wigner said: "The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery."