Sheldon Lee Glashow Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
That is why the stove's flame turns yellow when the soup boils over. The table salt in the soup contains sodium, whose dominant spectral lines are bright yellow.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
I have often said from the podium that although it is gravity that holds my feet to the ground, it is the electromagnetic force that stops me from falling through the ground. Electromagnetism binds the atoms together and puts a solid floor beneath my feet.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
The detector is like the journalist who must determine what, where, when, which, and how? What is the identity of the particle? Exactly where is it when it is observed? When does the particle get to the detector? Which way is it going? How fast is it moving?

Sheldon Lee Glashow
The confusion of the past [in particle physics] is now replaced by a simple and elegant synthesis. [This] standard theory may survive as a part of the ultimate theory, or it may turn out to be fundamentally wrong. In either case, it will have been an important way-station, and the next theory will have to be better.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
Contemplation of superstrings may evolve into an activity as remote from conventional particle physics as particle physics is from chemistry, to be conducted at schools of divinity by future equivalents of medieval theologians. For the first time since the Dark Ages, we can see how our noble search may end, with faith replacing science once again.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
In lieu of the traditional confrontation between theory and experiment, superstring theorists pursue an inner harmony where elegance, uniqueness and beauty define truth. The theory depends for its existence upon magical coincidences, miraculous cancellations and relations among seemingly unrelated (and possibly undiscovered) fields of mathematics.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
Einstein examined the photoelectric effect, which is now so well understood that it is used to open the doors of supermarkets and elevators when you step through a beam of light. In 1905 it was still a mystery.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
No matter how compelling or elegant it is, a theory of physics must be subjected to experimental verification or it differs little from medieval theology.

Sheldon Lee Glashow
The theory of everything may come in its time, but not until we are certain that Nature has exhausted her bag of performable tricks.

Sheldon Lee Glashow