David Gross quotes

David Gross is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate renowned for his pioneering work in quantum chromodynamics. His discoveries led to a deeper understanding of the fundamental forces that govern the behavior of particles. He continues to contribute to physics and inspire new generations of scientists. Here are 11 of his 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.

David Gross

The progress of science is much more muddled than is depicted in most history books. This is especially true of theoretical physics, partly because history is written by the victorious.

David Gross

Actually, I was more or less determined to be a theoretical physicist at the age of thirteen.

David Gross

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.

David Gross

Why is space-time doomed? There are many reasons, among which: In string theory we can change the dimension of space-time by changing the strength of the string force. Thus, the so-called II-A string theory, which semi-classically describes closed strings moving in ten-dimensional flat space for very weak coupling is dual for strong coupling to a theory, called M-theory, that at low energies is described by eleven-dimensional supergravity. By increasing the string coupling we can grow an extra dimension. How can the spatial continuum be fundamental if the number of spatial dimensions can be so changed?

David Gross

Physics is always a gamble; it is a game of exploration. That's the fun of it. We never know for sure what will happen. Sometimes, we theorists can anticipate, but nature is the final judge.

David Gross

Remarkably, the building of the Standard Model - the theory of how particles and forces interact - was the success of the conservatives. It required no revolution at the foundational level. Normal physics, the kind that goes on experiment after experiment, produced the Standard Model.

David Gross

String theory was not invented to describe gravity; instead it originated in an attempt to describe the strong interactions, wherein mesons can be thought of as open strings with quarks at their ends. The fact that the theory automatically described closed strings as well, and that closed strings invariably produced gravitons and gravity, and that the resulting quantum theory of gravity was finite and consistent is one of the most appealing aspects of the theory.

David Gross

The universe has been expanding since the big bang, thus early on it was hot and dense. To trace the history of the universe we must understand the dynamics that operates when the universe was hot and particles were very energetic. Before the standard model we could not go back further than 200,000 years after the big bang. Today, especially since QCD simplifies at high energy, we can extrapolate to very eary times, where nucleons melt and quarks and gluons are liberated to form a quark-gluon plasma.

David Gross