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This is an ultra-soft question about relatively recent history. While reading some of Mandelstam's papers, I noticed that he cites David John Candlin consistenly whenever he does anything with Grassman path-integral. Everyone else cites Berezin.

So I read Candlin's 1956 paper, and I was stunned to find a complete and correct description of anticommuting variables, presented more lucidly than anywhere else, with a clear definition of Grassman integration, and a proof that it reproduces the Fermionic quantum field. This is clearly the original source of all the Grassman methods. I was stunned that the inventor of this method is quietly buried away.

I wrote the Wikipedia page on the guy, but I couldn't find out anything beyond the sketchy stuff I found on an old Princeton staff listing. The fellow doesn't google very well at all.

Here are the questions:

  • Is he still alive? (Hello? Are you there?)
  • Did he become the experimental physicist David John Candlin in the late 1970s/early 1980s? Or is this someone else with the same name?
  • Did he get any credit for his discovery?

I mean, this is one of the central tools of modern physics, it is used every day by every theorist, and the inventor is never mentioned. It's 50% of the path integral. Why the silence?

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rd.springer.com/search?query=nuovo+cimento+candlin He wrote other theory papers in the 1950s. – Mitchell Porter Jun 4 '12 at 7:15
Oh, good find! I see he wrote a 1965 theory paper as well, but there are only a handful. I didn't find any biographical information, and the 1998 paper is by an experimental group, so he might have become part of a big experimental thing. The question still stands--- I don't know if the experimental guy and the theory guy are the same (but now that I see the link, seems that yes), and whether he's alive, and whether he gets credit now. – Ron Maimon Jun 4 '12 at 7:25
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If you check for the name d.j.candlin in cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Articles%20%26%20Preprints?ln=en you see that the experimental activity started in 1988. Actually the name rings a bell, and I have been in the same LEP experiment with him. Surely I would have known a theoretician in our midst.He is listed under Edinborough university. Most probably it is a son or a distant cousin – anna v Jun 4 '12 at 8:23
@annav: Was he 60 years old in 1988? The DJ Candlin I'm after was born in 1928. – Ron Maimon Jun 4 '12 at 8:56
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@MoziburUllah: The only source is the 1956 paper in Nuovo Cimento, the full ref on Wikipedia. It's not free, but it is downloadable with institutional subscription. Candlin predated Berezin's textbook by almost a decade, and Berezin's papers by a few years, but Berezin wasn't standing still--- he went farther--- Candlin defined the Grassman variables and showed how they reproduce the Fermionic sum over states, but Berezin worked with the determinant and did lots of proto-SUSY things, and more. I am not trying to say Berezin was unimportant, just that Candlin is neglected. – Ron Maimon Jun 13 '12 at 17:41
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