Rodney A. Brooks

Rodney A. Brooks was born in Syracuse, NY, in 1932. He attended the University of Florida and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in physics with Nobel laureate Norman Ramsey in 1963. At that time he was fortunate to learn Quantum Field Theory from its perfector, Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger, who had just published his five-paper series “The theory of quantized fields”, in which matter fields are treated for the first time on an equal basis with force fields. After several years as a post-doc at Harvard, Brooks spent five years working on aerospace projects. Then in 1970 he changed to the field of medical research. This led to a 25-year career at the National Institutes of Health, where he published 124 refereed articles. Among his accomplishments was construction of the highest resolution PET scanner of its time, the "Neuro-PET". He also invented dual-energy computed tomography (US patent 4247774), a method which has now been incorporated into commercial scanners. As an amateur clarinetist he founded and led a klezmer band called Shir Delite. After moving to New Zealand when he retired, he became aware that the wonderful QFT that he had learned from Schwinger is largely forgotten or misunderstood, leaving the lay public to founder in the weirdness and paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. He then made it his retirement mission to tell the people about QFT - the only theory that makes sense.