Sheldon Lee Glashow

thumb|Sheldon Glashow at Harvard University Sheldon Lee Glashow (born 5 December 1932) is an American physicist. He was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics (with colleagues Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg) for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force. Quotes 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. ...Things have changed. Today we have what has been called a Standard Model standard theory of elementary particle physics in which strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions all arise from a local symmetry principle. It is, in a sense, a complete and apparently correct theory, offering a qualitative description of all particle phenomena and precise quantitative prediction in many instances. There are no experimental data that contradict the theory. 19 December 1980 Toward a unified theory: Threads in a tapestry Science 210 4476 1319–1323 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.210.4476.1319 (quote from p. 1319) My father told me that science would be all right, but why didn’t I do it in my spare time and go into medicine, like my brothers ... I differed with him slightly about that. He relented when my brothers came back safely from the war. When I entered high school, he helped me build a chemistry lab in the basement, where I loved to perform long and dangerous experiments. as quoted by Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann in: The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1984/08/how-the-universe-works/666820/ August 1984 How the Universe Works. The ultimate goal of physics is a theory that explains all matter and energy. Today physicists may be close to achieving that goal, in large part because of the efforts of Sheldon L. Glashow Why was there a Big Bang? What, if anything, came before? What mechanisms generated the exponential inflation of the early Universe? What are dark matter and dark energy, which dominate today's Universe? How did the first stars and galaxies form? Why are the fundamental constants of nature what they are? Must we depend on the Cosmic Anthropic Principle to 'answer' such questions? Is our Universe unique, or must we appeal to a Multiverse? What will be the ultimate fate of our Universe? "Beyond Darwin: from the elements to the Universe." Contributions to Science (2009): 133-139 10.2436/20.7010.01.68 (quote from p. 139) ... science fiction was an important part of my life when I was, like I say, twelve, thirteen, fourteen." Sheldon Glashow: The Power of Useless Ideas! (099) Dr Brian Keating, YouTube December 1, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0_iaWgxQtA The Charm of Physics (1991) The color gauge theory postulates the existence of eight massless particles, sometimes called gluons, that are the carriers of the strong force just as the photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force. p. 151 Strong, weak and electromagnetic interaction are evidently part of a grand unified theory. These temperatures are today quite inaccessible. They were achieved only in the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Since then, the universe has congealed, losing its symmetry. p. 244 From Alchemy to Quarks (1994) ... If a distant galaxy is moving relative to us, its entire spectrum is Doppler-shifted in frequency. Its spectral lines are displaced relative to those of stationary light sources. Thanks to this effect, we know that distant galaxies recede from the solar system at speeds proportional to their distances from us. That's the effect that told us of the expanding universe, and of its birth, long ago, in the Big Bang. p. 385 The Elegant Universe, NOVA Interview (2003) ... Why is the muon, some dumb particle, 200 times heavier than the electron? Why is the proton about 2,000 times heavier than the electron? Why is the electric charge of the electron what it is? Why are there six quarks in nature? Why not seven or eleven or five? There are many, many "why" questions. Also a number of 'how' questions. What is the mechanism that causes the weak interactions to be weak and the electromagnetic interactions not weak? All kinds of questions remain. Many have to do with cosmology. How did the universe originate? How did the galaxies become distributed in space like the suds in the kitchen sink, as one of my colleagues has described it? Why is the cosmological constant apparently very tiny but non-zero and has a peculiar value that leads the universe to expand more rapidly? External links Autobiographical notes at Nobelprize.org Brief biography Category:Academics from the United States Category:Jews from the United States Category:Atheists from the United States Category:Humanists Category:Nobel laureates in Physics Category:1932 births Category:Living people Category:People from New York City Category:Physicists from the United States Category:Nobel laureates from the United States Category:Cornell University alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Stanford University faculty Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty