Pascal Jordan's legacy and the ongoing research in quantum field theory

After recalling Pascual Jordan's path breaking work in shaping quantum mechanics I explain his role as the protagonist of quantum field theory (QFT). Particular emphasis is given to the 1929 Kharkov conference where Jordan not only presents a quite modern looking panorama about the state of art, but were some of his ideas already preempt an intrinsic point of view about a future QFT liberated from the classical parallelism and quantum field theory, a new approach for which the conceptional basis began to emerge only 30 years later. Two quite profound subjects in which Jordan was far ahead of his contemporaries will be presented in separate sections: 'Bosonization and Re-fermionization instead of Neutrino theory of Light' and Nonlocal gauge invariants and an algebraic monopole quantization. The last section contains scientific episodes mixed with biographical details. It includes remarks about his much criticized conduct during the NS regime. Without knowing about his entanglement with the Nazis it is not possible to understand that such a giant of particle physics dies without having received a Nobel prize. (author)