ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Julian Schwinger

Julian Schwinger was a really smart scientist who lived a long time ago. He was born in 1918 and died in 1994. He liked to study things that were too small to see with our eyes, called particles. These particles are the tiny things that make up everything in the world around us, like the chairs we sit on and the air we breathe.

Julian Schwinger discovered many important things about particles. He was especially good at figuring out how particles interact with each other. This helped other scientists understand how things work in the universe.

One of his most important discoveries was something called the Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) theory. It's a really big word that means how particles that have electric charge interact with light. It's a bit like how you can see yourself in a mirror - light bounces off you and goes back into your eyes, so you can see your own reflection.

Schwinger's work helped scientists understand things like how the light from the sun can be turned into electricity, which we use to power our homes and cars. His ideas also helped to make our computers work better and faster.

So, Julian Schwinger was a very important scientist who helped us understand how particles work and how they interact with each other.