# Did Hugh David Politzer work independently for his contribution to asymptotic freedom?

The Nobel Prize was awarded to David Gross, Frank Wilczek and Hugh David Politzer. I believe David Gross worked with Frank Wilczek and was his thesis advisor.

On the other hand, I couldn't find much detail of the role of Hugh Politzer played in this discovery. It would also be interesting to know who proposed the method of theory validation. Again the same question would apply. I am lost on which tag to use so I may be in the incorrect area.

• Wikipedia on Politzer: "In his first published article, which appeared in 1973, Politzer described the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom: the closer quarks are to each other, the weaker the strong interaction will be between them.[3] When quarks are in extreme proximity, the nuclear force between them is so weak that they behave almost like free particles. This result—independently discovered at around the same time by Gross and Wilczek at Princeton University—was extremely important in the development of quantum chromodynamics. " Dec 3, 2020 at 15:14
• @Jon ..yes thank you. There it is. Wiki is the ususally the first place I look ...but I missed it this time. Dec 3, 2020 at 20:18
• Understood, not a problem... Almost too early in the article to have expected it. Dec 3, 2020 at 20:27

Experimentally, scaling violations predicted by it emerged convincingly in 1974. $$e^+e^-$$-collision jets were observed in 1975, and 3-jets in 1979 at PETRA. By that time there were hardly any doubters...