David Gross Quotes
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.
Gross, David J. Interview. Academy of Achievement, American Academy of Achievement, 21 May 2005.
The Senate had heard technical testimony of the Research Director of the Department of Energy on the importance of funding research on J/Psi particles and quarks:
This quotation illustrates a facet of science that often affects politics. At the time there had been much new information that tended to give more and more support to the notion of the atom. Most physics were by then convinced that there were atoms and that they seemed to behave just like Newton’s laws predicted that all bodies would. Mach however, would not even accept the fact that atoms really existed. He was not just any scientist but one of the better and more prestigious physicists in the world. New ideas are rarely accepted by all, even in the scientific disciplines. In the late 20th century scientific evidence began to be amassed indicating that there was global warming and a significant part of it was man made. As the data kept accumulating and the results of studies were understood, the vast majority of scientists became convinced about global warming. But there were a few who did not think that there was yet sufficient evidence to reach that conclusion, just as Mach was in 1897 convinced that there the atoms existence had not been demonstrated and in his judgment he did not think that atoms were a reasonable explanation of the physical world. But the fact that he had not yet become convinced should be examined by policy makers and juxtaposed against the reasons and the evidence by the other scientists. He might have been right; however he was not. The global warming nay sayers might be right, but with each passing day, the likelihood becomes less as more evidence is aggregated and analyzed.
David Jonathan Gross is 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. Gross is the Chancellor's Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and was formerly the KITP director and holder of their Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics. He is also a faculty member in the UCSB Physics Department and is currently affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. He is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
