Francisco Calderon Ossa

Francisco Calderón is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA, where he also completed a certificate in Science, Technology, and Society. His dissertation, supervised by Laura Ruetsche, examines what makes the quantum field theories used to describe how particles interact so successful despite their tortuous history. Before coming to Michigan, he studied physics and philosophy at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where he’s originally from.

Francisco was a Predoctoral Fellow at Alexander Blum’s Historical Epistemology of the Final Theory Program Research Group. During his fellowship, he studied the history leading up to “asymptotic freedom,” a feature of the quantum field theory of the atomic nucleus that guarantees its consistency at high energies. This work will be part of his dissertation.

Aside from the historical, philosophical, and mathematical foundations of quantum field theories, Francisco is interested in broader questions in the history, philosophy, and social studies of the natural sciences, including feminist epistemologies of science and conversations on the role of values in science.

Publications

• "The Causal Axioms of Algebraic Quantum Field Theory: A Diagnostic", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 104 98-108, 2024.

• "Self-normalizing Path Integrals" (with Iván M. Burbano), Foundations of Physics, 54 60, 2024.