David Gross
David Gross
David Jonathan Grossis an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. He is the former director and current holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a faculty member in the UC Santa Barbara Physics Department and is currently affiliated...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth19 February 1941
CountryUnited States of America
Some wonder whether some day we will arrive at a theory of everything and run out of new problems to solve - much as the effort to explore the earth ran out of new continents to explore.
Quantum field theory was originally developed for the treatment of electrodynamics, immediately after the completion of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the Dirac equation.
My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.
In the lab, we could not see or physically describe the mathematical objects that we called quarks, which we suspected were the key to unlocking the dynamics of the strong force that binds together the clump of protons and neutrons at the center of the atom.
In order to achieve a true understanding of string theory, some new idea will be required, and most likely, some break with the concepts on which we've traditionally based physical theory.
From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly.
Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.
Theorists can be wrong; only nature is always right.
The early 1960s, when I started my graduate studies at UC Berkeley, were a period of experimental supremacy and theoretical impotence.
Since the founding of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, theoretical physics had nurtured an extremely radical tradition.
Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.
I strongly believe that the fundamental laws of nature are not emergent phenomena.
I had set out to disprove quantum field theory - and the opposite occurred! I was shocked.
Fortunately, nature is as generous with its problems as Nobel with his fortune. The more we know, the more aware we are of what we know not.