Richard S. Westfall  is best known for his biography of a mathematician who was a key figure in what?
Richard S. Westfall Richard S. Westfall (April 22, 1924 – August 21, 1996) was an American academic, biographer and historian of science. He is best known for his biography of Isaac Newton and his work on the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
P-adic quantum mechanics "p"-adic quantum mechanics is a relatively recent approach to understanding the nature of fundamental physics. It is the application of p-adic analysis to quantum mechanics. The p-adic numbers are a counterintuitive arithmetic system that was discovered by the German mathematician Kurt Hensel in about 1899. The closely related adeles and ideles were introduced in the 1930s by Claude Chevalley and André Weil. Their study has now transformed into a major branch of mathematics. They were occasionally applied to the physical sciences, but it wasn't until a publication by the Russian mathematician Igor Volovich in 1987 that the subject was taken seriously. There are now hundreds of research articles on the subject, along with international journals as well.