David Jonathan Gross (born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He was the winner, along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Quotes

• ... 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.
  • "David J. Gross - Biographical", Nobel Prize in Physics, nobelprize.org (2004)

• 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.
  • "The Discovery of Asymptotic Freedom and the Emergence of QCD", Nobel Lecture, p. 79, nobelprize.org (2004)

• 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.
  • "Einstein and the Search for Unification", p. 10, in The legacy of Albert Einstein: a collection of essays in celebration of the year of physics (2007)

• 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?
  • "Einstein and the Search for Unification", p. 11, in The legacy of Albert Einstein: a collection of essays in celebration of the year of physics (2007)

• 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.
  • "Waiting for the Revolution", an interview of David Gross by Peter Byrne, Quanta Magazine (2013)

• 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.
  • "Physics is always a gamble", an interview with David Gross by Shubashree Desikan, The Hindu (2015)

External links