Zitat des Tages von Burton Richter:
Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.
Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.
For nuclear power to have a future, we'll either need more Yucca Mountains or a way to decrease the stuff we put there.
In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me.
During my years at the synchrotron laboratory, I had become interested in the theory of quantum electrodynamics and had decided that what I would most like to do after completing my dissertation work was to probe the short-distance behavior of the electromagnetic interaction.
Iran wants to join the group of countries that want to know about the biggest things, like space.
While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.
Politics is a lot tougher than physics.
I was born on 22 March 1931 in New York, the elder child of Abraham and Fanny Richter.
While a lab director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community. I learned this early in my career while I was leading the construction of the SPEAR facility.
I got no thrill from solving an integral equation, but I did get a thrill from building an exotic piece of equipment that worked.
So now, if we don't fund the physical sciences, where will the Next Big Thing come from?
As accelerators reach higher and higher energies, we may need a new Standard Model, or, at least, today's may need to be modified, but that's the way science operates.
During my first year as a graduate student, we worked on a measurement of the isotope shift and hyperfine structure of mercury isotopes.
