How Do Scientific Breakthroughs Happen?
Closer To Truth
"Asymptotic freedom," the last big breakthrough, was discovered
by Gross, Wilcheck and Pulitzer just before I started my graduate
school. It took me a year to understand what was happening in
the world of physics. The standard model involved new
mathematics unfamiliar to both physicists and mathematicians at
the time, and whose exploration proved to be very rich. The
standard model is based on a nonlinear version of Maxwell's
equations, where two waves interact and scatter each other but
cannot be treated classically the way light waves can be treated,
so it has to be treated quantum mechanically. In 1976, right after
I finished my graduate school, there was a breakthrough in the
math of nonbillion gauge theory applied to these strong
interactions. In 1982 and 1983, John Schwartz, Michael Green and
Lars Brink made enough progress in string theory that I started to
take their work seriously, though I knew it was a long-term
proposition. In 1984, a colleague who had just returned from
Aspen mentioned the development that had been achieved, and
at that instant, I knew I would be working on string theories
because it was like magic.
The breakthrough of Green and Schwartz in August 1984 made
the difficulties in elementary particle physics go away. It had a
huge impact on me, and I was sure that my interest would never
be the same again. By the mid-1980s, I had caught up to where
others were. As a graduate student, I was obsessed with the fact
that the equations of the Standard Model are challenging to solve
because the quantum effects are significant. In 1994, Cyborg and
I collaborated on an interesting instance of what people in the
physics and mathematics fields call "Cyborg written theory." The
equations of the Standard Model are tough to solve because
quantum effects are large, and it proved to be particularly
captivating. The story that I presented in a lecture at USC
(University of Southern California) in 1995, where I sort of unified
the string theories, really resulted from an attempt to disprove
some of them. In 1995, I was successful in doing something
similar for string theory. I tried to reduce the number of string
theories by showing that some were inconsistent.
Closer To Truth
"Asymptotic freedom," the last big breakthrough, was discovered
by Gross, Wilcheck and Pulitzer just before I started my graduate
school. It took me a year to understand what was happening in
the world of physics. The standard model involved new
mathematics unfamiliar to both physicists and mathematicians at
the time, and whose exploration proved to be very rich. The
standard model is based on a nonlinear version of Maxwell's
equations, where two waves interact and scatter each other but
cannot be treated classically the way light waves can be treated,
so it has to be treated quantum mechanically. In 1976, right after
I finished my graduate school, there was a breakthrough in the
math of nonbillion gauge theory applied to these strong
interactions. In 1982 and 1983, John Schwartz, Michael Green and
Lars Brink made enough progress in string theory that I started to
take their work seriously, though I knew it was a long-term
proposition. In 1984, a colleague who had just returned from
Aspen mentioned the development that had been achieved, and
at that instant, I knew I would be working on string theories
because it was like magic.
The breakthrough of Green and Schwartz in August 1984 made
the difficulties in elementary particle physics go away. It had a
huge impact on me, and I was sure that my interest would never
be the same again. By the mid-1980s, I had caught up to where
others were. As a graduate student, I was obsessed with the fact
that the equations of the Standard Model are challenging to solve
because the quantum effects are significant. In 1994, Cyborg and
I collaborated on an interesting instance of what people in the
physics and mathematics fields call "Cyborg written theory." The
equations of the Standard Model are tough to solve because
quantum effects are large, and it proved to be particularly
captivating. The story that I presented in a lecture at USC
(University of Southern California) in 1995, where I sort of unified
the string theories, really resulted from an attempt to disprove
some of them. In 1995, I was successful in doing something
similar for string theory. I tried to reduce the number of string
theories by showing that some were inconsistent.
