Zitat des Tages von Sheldon Lee Glashow:
The standard theory may survive as a part of the ultimate theory, or it may turn out to be fundamentally wrong. In either case, it will have been an important way-station, and the next theory will have to be better.
There's something called From 'Alchemy to Quarks,' which will teach you everything you have to know, you want to know, about physics.
The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal.
In 1956, when I began doing theoretical physics, the study of elementary particles was like a patchwork quilt. Electrodynamics, weak interactions, and strong interactions were clearly separate disciplines, separately taught and separately studied. There was no coherent theory that described them all.
One of the principal achievements of physics in the 20th century has been the revelation that the atom is not indivisible or elementary at all but has a complex structure.
What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable.
I had more or less abandoned the idea of an electroweak gauge theory during the period 1961-1970. Of the several reasons for this, one was the failure of my naive foray into renormalizability.
My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills.
Would physics at Geneva be as good as physics at Harvard? I think not. Rome? I think not. In Britain, I don't think there is one place, neither Cambridge nor Oxford, which can compare with Harvard.
I came to graduate school at Harvard University in 1954. My thesis supervisor, Julian Schwinger, had about a dozen doctoral students at a time. Getting his ear was as difficult as it was rewarding. I called my thesis 'The Vector Meson in Elementary Particle Decays', and it showed an early commitment to an electroweak synthesis.
I wish to thank the Nobel Foundation for granting me the greatest honor to which a scientist may aspire.
There are physicists, and there are string theorists. Of course the string theorists are physicists, but the string theorists in general will not attend lectures on experimental physics. They will not be terribly concerned about the results of experiments. They will talk to one another.
My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.
