That 1958 work, not Sin-itiro Tomonaga’s paper as occasionally alleged, was the source for Joaquin Luttinger’s important model in condensed-matter physics and for ”bosonization.” Walter’s 1955 monograph on quantum electrodynamics was highly influential.
Two remarkable papers he published in Nuclear Physics in 1959 and 1960 contain ideas pointing to the eightfold way and the theory of quarks developed later by Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne’eman.
[5]Besides pioneering work in quantum field theory, Walter Thirring devoted his scientific life to mathematical physics.
Walter Thirring authored Cosmic Impressions, Templeton Press, Philadelphia and London, in 2007, and in that book he sums up his feelings about the scientific discoveries made by modern cosmology:In the last decades, new worlds have been unveiled that our great teachers wouldn’t have even dreamed of.
He recollects encounters with scientists like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and others as well as his collaborations with Murray Gell-Mann and Elliott Lieb.