David Gross Quotes

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.

To understand the universe in the state that it began in, the so-called Big Bang, we need laws of physics that work better than our current set of rules and procedures, which break down when we try to push them back to the beginning.

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.

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. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.

The early 1960s, when I started my graduate studies at UC Berkeley, were a period of experimental supremacy and theoretical impotence.

My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.

I was born in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 1941, the eldest of four sons.

Theorists can be wrong; only nature is always right.

Quantum field theory was originally developed for the treatment of electrodynamics, immediately after the completion of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the Dirac equation.

Since the founding of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, theoretical physics had nurtured an extremely radical tradition.

I had set out to disprove quantum field theory - and the opposite occurred! I was shocked.

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.

My father and mother treated us children as intellectual equals, thus greatly bolstering our self-confidence and our interest in ideas of all kinds.

I strongly believe that the fundamental laws of nature are not emergent phenomena.

Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.

The main reason why people should care about research in fundamental physics is the same reason they care about astronomy and cosmology. People, children, want to know what we're made out of, how it works, and why the universe is the way it is.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.