Nobel Laureate Kenneth G. Wilson, who joined Ohio State University’s Department of Physics as the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor in 1988, died June 15, 2013 at his home in Maine. He was 77 years old.

Wilson came to Ohio State from Cornell University, where he had been a member of their physics department since 1963.

Caroline Whitacre, Ohio State University Vice President for Research, said, "Ken Wilson was well known for his work in theoretical physics, winning the Nobel Prize in 1982, at the age of 46. He was part of the generation of scientists who truly revolutionized physics in the 1970’s. He will not only be remembered for his Nobel Prize winning work on critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions, but also for his efforts to reform K-12 education. The impact of Ken Wilson's work in this area will be felt for decades to come.”

In the early 1960s and 1970s, Wilson resolved some of the most fundamental problems in theoretical physics, creating powerful theoretical tools which are now employed in every area of physics.

Wilson also was among the first in his field to use computer simulations and modeling as research tools. He was regarded as a “supercomputing visionary” who championed the National Science Foundation’s establishment of academic supercomputing centers across the country. He directed Cornell’s supercomputing center before coming to Ohio State.

Wilson’s career was studded with accomplishment, and the resulting recognition and highest awards given to physicists on both the national and international stage.  In 1980, he was a co-winner of Israel’s Wolf Prize in physics--prizes second only to the Nobel Prize. Other early honors and recognition include the A.C. Eringen Medal, Franklin Medal, Boltzmann Medal, and Dannie Heinemann Prize.

He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics—given for his work on critical phenomena including phase transitions. He developed renormalization group methods that solved these problems and many fundamental problems in relativistic quantum mechanics.

Wilson was drawn to Ohio State because its physics department had a demonstrated track record of efforts to improve the way physics is taught—and Wilson had become increasingly disturbed by the state the nation’s educational system was in, particularly regarding the teaching of math and science. He had ideas about how to fix it that were far ahead of his time and believed Ohio State’s programs in science literacy, cognitive studies, and training and retraining of science teachers, would be the place to do it.  

Ohio State University Department of Physics Chair James J. Beatty, said, “Ken Wilson came to Ohio State at a time when his passion had turned from theoretical physics and lattice gauge theory to research in science education and education reform. Ken provided both vision and visibility to issues surrounding reform in science and mathematics education in America. He was a leader in the national dialogue that has ultimately led to a renewed focus on STEM education in the state and the nation.” 

With the support of Ohio State leadership, Wilson began to build an innovative program for improved teaching. This led to Project Discovery, an Ohio statewide Systemic Initiative to improve science and mathematics teaching in the public schools, jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the state of Ohio. Wilson was its co-Principal Investigator from 1991-96 and organized a summer training program for teachers in those fields.

Wilson argued that we needed to rethink how we educate our young centered on the concept of active involvement. His “Physics by Inquiry” approach to teaching was based on work by physicist Arnold Arons—an important influence on Wilson’s thinking—and Aron’s collaborator Lillian McDermott.

While he continued an active research program, his years at Ohio State marked a transition in his career trajectory and are most remembered for his radical and visionary new efforts toward educational reforms. The core thinking of the programs that Wilson developed at Ohio State was echoed in a National Academy of Sciences report on improving the nation’s schools that mandated “inquiry-based investigations.”

 “Ken concentrated on education research while at Ohio State.  In part, he decided to come here because he could start a Physics Education Research group in the Department of Physics,” physics professor and colleague Robert Perry said. “And, this push to rethink our approach to how we deliver science education has had a profound influence on our department and how we teach.
 

“But he also spent over five years working on light-front quantum chromodynamics, collaborating with about a dozen faculty, postdocs and graduate students. He was my primary collaborator for much of my career at Ohio State—unbelievable good fortune.”

The vibrancy of his ongoing work to push the boundaries of his discipline were honored in 1993, with the Aneesure Rahman Prize from the American Physical Society,  “for his pioneering efforts on behalf of the field of computational physics and for the invention of lattice gauge theory which established the framework for lattice field theory.”

During this time, he also wrote seminal papers for top journals in the field and gave research presentations at national and international conferences.

Wilson continued to make considerable investments of his time and energy to conduct additional research on educational reform and participate in initiatives that sought to shed new light on these issues. He published several papers and the book, with Bennett Daviss, Redesigning Education, published in 1994.  

In 1998, he published the “Education Yesterday, Education Tomorrow” issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Other publications in this area included: "From Social Construction to Questions for Research: The Promise of the Sociology of Science," and "Beyond Social Construction," both with C.K. Barsky, in The One Culture? A Conversation about Science, J.A. Labinger and H. Collins, Eds., University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London (2001); “Applied Research and Development: Support for Continuing Improvement in Education,” with C.K. Barsky, Daedalus, 127, 233 (1998); Redesigning Education, with Bennett Daviss, Henry Holt, Inc. (1994). He continued working with Constance Barsky on reviewing and extending their draft manuscript on a paradigm shift in education research. 

Wilson served on the Board of Directors of the National Education Association National Foundation

for the Improvement of Education from 1997 to 2003; the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science from 1995 to 2000; and was a sponsor of the Daedalus Writers Conferences, at Ohio State University in 1996 and 1998. 

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences; and elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Physical Society, and the American Philosophical Society.

Wilson did his undergraduate work at Harvard, where he was a Putnam Fellow, and received his PhD from Caltech in 1961.

He retired from Ohio State in December, 2008. He is survived by his wife, Alison Brown.

Click here for NYT Obituary

For more information about Professor Wilson's life and career, click here.

Thanks to Sandi Rutkowski in ASC Communications for her tireless work in compiling this article.