John Dirk Walecka

John Dirk Walecka, often quoted as J. Dirk Walecka (born March 11, 1932) is an American theoretical nuclear and particle physicist. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society

Life Walecka studied at Harvard University as an undergraduate, reviving a Bachelor of Arts in 1954, Walecka moved to Stanford University in 1959, where he was made assistant professor in 1960, upon completing his NSF fellowship, and Professor in 1966. From 1977 to 1982 he was head of the physics faculty and from 1987 he holds the title of emeritus Professor of Physics. and was a fellow of the National Science Foundation from 1958 through 1960, while at CERN and then Stanford.

In 1996 Walecka received the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics. for "his preeminent theoretical guidance and inspirational leadership in exploiting electromagnetic and weak probes of the nucleus and for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of the nucleus as a relativistic quantum many-body system."

In 2009 he received the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal "for theoretical contributions in electroweak interactions with nuclei, the development of relativistic field theories of the nuclear many-body problem and unparalleled achievements in the education of a generation of young nuclear many-body physicists".

Publications Theoretical nuclear and subnuclear physics, Oxford University Press 1996 with Alexander L. Fetter: Quantum theory of many particle systems, McGraw Hill 1971, Dover 2006 with Fetter: Theoretical mechanics of particles and continua, McGraw Hill 1980, Dover 2003 with Fetter: Nonlinear Mechanics, Dover 2006 Introduction to General Relativity, World Scientific 2007 Introduction to Modern Physics - Theoretical Foundations, World Scientific 2008 Electron Scattering for Nuclear and Nucleon Structure, Cambridge University Press 2001

Advanced Modern Physics, World Scientific Publishing, 2010 Topics in Modern Physics: Theoretical Foundations, World Scientific Publishing, 2013 Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism, World Scientific Publishing, 2018 Introduction to Classical Mechanics, World Scientific Publishing, 2020 Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, World Scientific Publishing, 2021