Kenneth Geddes Wilson was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982 for his work on phase transitions, such as the transformation of a substance from the liquid to the gaseous state, like melting ice and emerging magnetism. It was embodied in his fundamental work on the renormalization group. Wilson was led to this breakthrough from his struggles with mysteries in elementary particle physics and quantum field theory. The tools Wilson brought to bear in his research were diverse, ranging from abstract mathematics to supercomputing. Wilson became a pioneer in the field of supercomputing, and was instrumental in the National Science Foundation’s establishment of five national scientific supercomputing centers, one of them at Cornell University.
