The state is not abolished, it withers away: How quantum field theory became a theory of scattering

- Modern Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is generally formulated as a theory of scattering.
- The paper gives a historical analysis of how this came about.
- It is traced back to two radical attempts to solve the divergence difficulties of QFT.
- In these attempts the instantaneous quantum state was abolished entirely.
- These unsuccessful attempts provided the framework for reformulating QFT.