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
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.
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.
Actually, I was more or less determined to be a theoretical physicist at the age of thirteen.
When I was at Berkeley, the framework of quantum field theory could calculate the dynamics of electromagnetism. It could roughly describe the motion of the weak nuclear force, radiation. But it hit a brick wall with the strong interaction, the binding force.
The progress of science is much more muddled than is depicted in most history books. This is especially true of theoretical physics, partly because history is written by the victorious.
My father and mother treated us children as intellectual equals, thus greatly bolstering our self-confidence and our interest in ideas of all kinds.
Reading history, one rarely gets the feeling of the true nature of scientific development, in which the element of farce is as great as the element of triumph.