James Bjorken is well-known for his works on the theory of the strong interaction. In the formative years of Quantum Chromodynamics, he predicted the existence of the charm quark together with Sheldon Glashow, and his discovery of the asymptotic scaling behavior of the momentum distribution functions in deep inelastic scattering, now known as Bjorken scaling, was key to identifying quarks as elementary particles.
Bjorken is Emeritus Professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and a former Associate Director for Physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
He was awarded the Dirac Medal of the ICTP in 2004. With Sidney Drell, he co-authored classic companion text books on relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.
