Sheldon Lee Glashow
Sheldon Lee Glashow
Sheldon Lee Glashowis a Nobel Prize winning American theoretical physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Harvard University, and is a member of the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth5 December 1932
CountryUnited States of America
came dozen ear early elementary graduate harvard particle school students thesis time university
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.
accept children comfort education father joys knowledge love money mother neither nobel nor parents regret secure taught time university work
While my parents never had the time or money to secure university education themselves, they were adamant that their children should. In comfort and in love, we were taught the joys of knowledge and of work well done. I only regret that neither my mother nor my father could live to see the day I would accept the Nobel Prize.
destroy energy issue question survive
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.
atom complex elementary revelation
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.
nobel scientist thank wish
I wish to thank the Nobel Foundation for granting me the greatest honor to which a scientist may aspire.
bad care doctor interested might retrospect science spare taking time
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.
attend concerned course general lectures string terribly theorists
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.
course plane proving sort
Plane geometry is sort of the key course where you learn about proving things and abstraction.
biologists natural physicists scientists seeking types understanding various
I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types - chemists and physicists and biologists and such - and we all have the same goal. We are making progress.
age bombs children committed countries interested physics war
I think that I got committed to physics at the age of - oh, it must have been 1942 - ten, when most countries were at war and children were interested in airplanes and bombs and such things.
science totally
My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.
anyone suppose worried
I suppose I'm worried that someday there will be some exciting experiments to do, and there won't be anyone around who knows what experiments are.
age basement became bodies brother chemistry early equip falling father helped interested knew lab laws skilled synthesis ten
From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.
offer wandered
From 1958 to 1966, I was in exile. I just wandered around teaching, waiting for an offer from Harvard.