In this task you will be given a text passage from a trivia quiz. You should choose the category this question belongs to from these categories: History, Science, Social Science, Fine Arts, Literature. You can only choose one category, so if in doubt, please choose the closest match.

A weight of the nth power of this parameter is imputed to contributions to elements of an S matrix by nth-order Feynman diagrams; thus, this number can be considered the order of expansion in perturbative quantum electrodynamics. This constant is a measure of the electron anomalous magnetic moment, which explains its role in the relativistic splitting of atomic spectral lines that is its namesake. The coupling constant for the electromagnetic interactions of electrons, it is equal to the square of the ratio of the electron and Planck charges, or, in cgs units, the electron charge squared divided by the speed of light times Diracs constant. For ten points, name this physical constant usually denoted alpha and equal to about one over one hundred thirty-seven.
Science

In 1999, McIlroy created an adversary for this algorithm that guarantees that it will run in worst-case time. Its worst-case runtime can be avoided by switching to heapsort after a certain recursion depth, a construction known as introsort. Like mergesort, it is easily parallelizable, and its runtime can be decreased by first selecting the median of the unsorted input list. It was invented by C.A.R. Hoare, and its second phase is the partition function, which splits the original list into lists of elements that are greater or less than the chosen pivot value. For 10 points, identify this divide-and-conquer sorting algorithm which runs in big O of n log n time, named for its speed.
Science

A boarding school in one of this author's novels is run by a hunchbacked crone named Sesame Weichbrodt. In that novel, the alcoholic hops merchant Alois Permaneder is briefly married to Tony, who also has a brief and loveless marriage to Bendix Grunlich. In another of his novels, Mynheer Peeperkorn and the protagonist are both attracted to the intriguing Russian woman Clavdia Chauchat. In one of his novels, Christian ends up in an insane asylum and Hanno dies of typhus, which is the culmination of the decline of the title family. He wrote about the contrasting philosophies of Naphta and Settembrini in a novel about Hans Castorp's stay in a Swiss sanatorium. For 10 points, name this author of Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, who also wrote Death in Venice.

Literature