Scientists and mathematicians #3…

Some theoretical physicists play loose with mathematics. Feynman, for example, never worried about the convergence of the series needed to calculate things in QED (that’s quantum electrodynamics); in fact, he designed a technique, now called Feynman diagrams, to allow him to throw away infinities easily and just hoped things would work out. That’s called renormalization. The renormalization of quantum field theories became a big deal. The electro-weak theory of Weinberg, Glashow, and Salam, d...