Res Jost


Res Jost was a Swiss theoretical physicist, who worked mainly in constructive quantum field theory.

Life and work

Jost studied in Bern and at the University of Zurich, where he received his doctorate in 1946 under Gregor Wentzel. He then spent half a year with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where he introduced the "Jost function" into scattering theory. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant of Wolfgang Pauli in Zurich. From 1949 to 1955, in 1957, 1962/3 and 1968 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he worked with Walter Kohn, Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger and Abraham Pais among others. From 1955, he was extraordinary professor for theoretical physics at ETH and starting from 1959 professor. In 1964, he and Rudolf Haag created the journal "Communications in Mathematical Physics “.
Jost established at the ETH a school of mathematical physics. Among his graduate students were Sergio Albeverio, Klaus Hepp, Konrad Osterwalder, David Ruelle, Robert Schrader, Eduard Zehnder, Rudolf Seiler, Martin Kummer.
Jost researched quantum-mechanical scattering theory and the mathematical quantum field theory, where he in 1958 with the methods of Arthur Strong Wightman proved the PCT theorem and in 1957 introduced the Jost - Lehmann - Dyson - representation . Jost was corresponding member Austrian Academy of Sciences and United States National Academy of Sciences. He received in 1984 the Max Planck medal.
Jost married Viennese physicist Hilde Fleischer in 1949. One of his leisure activities was mushroom growing.

Works