Word: glashow
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Questions such as these challenged much of the physics community until Glashow's so-called "standard theory" was accepted in the 1970s. Glashow takes the reader through the questions which increasingly precise empirical data posed, the theories constructed to explained these observations (which were often the results of faulty experiments), the shortcomings of these theories in the face of general scientific principles or new data, and so on, in an endless cycle...
...Glashow finally begins to provide a clear history in his discussion of Murray Gell-Mann's conjecture that the fundamental elements underlying all of the mysterious particles are quarks. It is not surprising that Glashow is at his best here. Quarks are the jumping board for much of his brilliant theoretical synthesis of the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. This is his turf: it was Glashow's prediction that a fourth, "charm" quark existed, which resolved many of the difficulties of Gell-Mann's theory...
...hidden (and most interesting) theme which ties the scientific portions of Interactions together is the quest for theories which simply and elegantly explain observations of nature. Glashow refers to this as "the rock-bottom faith of the physicist in the underlying simplicity of nature's laws...
...Glashow attempts to make this theme explicit by looking into the minds of the scientists who have contributed the significant theoretical advances which constitute our present knowledge. Glashow indeed promises us just such a study in the book's subtitle, "A Journey Through the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of this World...
...promise goes unfulfilled. The the autobiographical portions of this book are shallow and seemingly irrelevant to the development of Glashow's thought...