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
offer wandered
From 1958 to 1966, I was in exile. I just wandered around teaching, waiting for an offer from Harvard.
failure gauge less period reasons several theory
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.
course plane proving sort
Plane geometry is sort of the key course where you learn about proving things and abstraction.
nobel scientist thank wish
I wish to thank the Nobel Foundation for granting me the greatest honor to which a scientist may aspire.
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.
science totally
My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.
began clearly coherent elementary particles separate separately taught theory weak
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.
either next standard theory ultimate
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.
biggest good prediction theories
String theory's biggest prediction is that gravity exists. That's good. That's a lot more than preceding theories could do.
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.
history originated problem promising rather string technique theory understand wonderful
String theory has had a long and wonderful history. It originated as a technique to try to understand the strong force. It was a calculational mechanism, a way of approaching a mathematical problem that was too difficult, and it was a promising way, but it was only a technique. It was a mathematical technique rather than a theory in itself.
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.
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.
advent aura average idealistic nuclear replaced research saw science scientific solved weapons
In the 1950s, the average person saw science as something that solved problems. With the advent of nuclear weapons and pollution, the idealistic aura around scientific research has been replaced by cynicism.