James Cronin Quotes

I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

We had to understand things like why the top quark was so heavy and the electron is so light. The Higgs is a big, important step.

I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found.

My present work concerns the problems connected with the theory of elementary particles, the theory of gravitation and cosmology and I shall be glad if I can manage to make some contribution to these important branches of science.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, one of the questions has been ticked off the list, but there are many others. We hope that we can find answers or hints for answers to at least some of them. But of course, this is in the hands of nature.

You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.

Not only am I not persuaded by the testimony; I do not even understand it. For me the charm of quarks is well hidden ...

I had been interested in particle physics, which deals with the fundamental constituents of matter.

I would hope that the publicity around the Higgs boson would increase the public awareness of physics and cosmology.

I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses.

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.

Physicists are interested in measuring neutrino properties because they tell us about the structure of the Standard Model, the well-tested theory that describes matter's most basic elements and interactions.

During this period, with a series of excellent students, we further studied hyperon decays.

There's something called From 'Alchemy to Quarks,' which will teach you everything you have to know, you want to know, about physics.

I am fascinated by quantum physics.

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.

Physicists have yet to understand why the Higgs boson's mass is what it is.

The top quark was discovered in 1995, and since then, the Higgs has become our obsession because the standard model was incomplete without it.

As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics, lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore.

The standard model of particle physics says that the universe consists of a very small number of particles, 12, and a very small number of forces, four. If we're correct about those 12 particles and those four forces and understand how they interact, properly, we have the recipe for baking up a universe.

What lots of people have been trying to do ever since is find what's beyond the current Standard Model. So far, it has stood impervious to all attacks.

Theorists can create all sorts of theories which go beyond the Standard Model. But there's not one bit of experimental evidence to point out which way you should go.

Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries.

The aim of particle physics is to understand what everything’s made of, and how everything sticks together. By everything I mean me and you, the Earth, the Sun, the 100 billion suns in our galaxy and the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Absolutely everything.

There are a lot of good things about string theory, and it's great that some people want to work on it.