Lance J. Dixon
Theoretical physicist Lance Dixon is a Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics in the Theory Group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at Stanford University.
Over the past 25 years, Dixon and his collaborators Zvi Bern and David Kosower have revolutionized the methods for the calculation of scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory. Their work has made possible calculations involving Feynman diagrams, the basic tools for the analysis of elementary particle reactions, of previously unthinkable difficulty. These developments have enabled high-precision predictions for the most complex processes now studied at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, exposed surprising new structures in highly supersymmetric quantum field theories, and opened new routes to the exploration of the quantum theory of gravity.
Dixon graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in physics and applied mathematics, followed by a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1986. He held a postdoctoral position at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center for one year before returning to Princeton as an assistant professor. In 1988, he returned to SLAC, where he was a Panofsky Fellow before joining the faculty in 1992. He was awarded the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society in 2014 for his scattering amplitudes research.