Polyakov remembers the development of Renormalization Group and Conformal Bootstrap as "With the use of the ingenious technique, developed by Gribov and Migdal [1] in the problem of reggeons, I found connections between phenomenological theory and “bootstrap” equations (Polyakov [2]). Sasha Migdal did very similar work independently. There was also something new–I formulated “fusion rules” for correlations, which we now would call operator product expansion [3]. I had mixed feelings when I found out later that the same rules at the same time and in more generality have been found by L. Kadanoff [4] and K. Wilson [5].
While for the Renormalization Group, we frequently also mentioned the names of K. Wilson and Michael Fisher together (e.g. Wilson-Fisher fixed point).
question: What roles had Gribov, Migdal, Polyakov, L. Kadanoff, K. Wilson and M. Fisher play in the Renormalization Group?
P.S. It seems that K. Wilson gets the most credit for the development of Renormalization Group (a single recipient for Nobel Prize in Physics (1982)). But M. Fisher, L. Kadanoff and K. Wilson share credits for the earlier Wolf Prize in Physics (1980), for "for pathbreaking developments culminating in the general theory of the critical behavior at transitions between the different thermodynamic phases of matter."
A side question: Why does K Wilson get the most credits for this subject?
Ref:
[1] V. Gribov and A. Migdal, ZHETF 55, 1498 (1968).
[2] A. Polyakov, ZHETF 55, 1026 (1968)
[3] A. Polyakov, ZHETF 57, 271 (1969).
[4] L. Kadanoff, Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 1430 (1969).
[5] K. Wilson, Phys. Rev. 179, 1499 (1969).