Author Chris Quigg, Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, discussed his latest book, 'Grace in all Simplicity: Beauty, Truth and Wonders on the Path to the Higgs Boson and New Laws of Nature' in February 2024, Department of Physics, University of Oxford.
About the book
How do the remarkable recent discoveries of the Higgs boson, dark matter, and dark energy connect with the equally revolutionary discoveries in centuries past? In 'Grace in All Simplicity', readers will delight in Cahn and Quigg's engaging prose and see how the infinite and the infinitesimal are joined. Today, physicists and astronomers are exploring distances from a billionth of a billionth of the human scale to the entire cosmos, and contemplating time intervals that range from less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second out to far longer than the age of the universe. Leaving home in this metaphorical way requires devising new instruments that spectacularly expand our senses and conceiving original ways of thinking that expand our minds. This is at once an act of audacity and an exercise in humility.
'Grace in All Simplicity' narrates the saga of how we have prospected for some of Nature’s most tightly held secrets, the basic constituents of matter and the fundamental forces that rule them. Our current understanding of the world (and universe) we inhabit is the result of curiosity, diligence, and daring, of abstraction and synthesis, and of an abiding faith in the value of exploration. In these pages we will meet scientists of both past and present. These men and women are professional scientists and amateurs, the eccentric and the conventional, performers and introverts.
About the authors
Chris Quigg is Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He graduated in physics at Yale before moving to Berkeley. He is the author of an acclaimed text on gauge theories and critical works on high-energy collisions, quarks, neutrinos, and the Higgs boson. He received the American Physical Society’s Sakurai Prize for theoretical physics and the German Alexander von Humboldt Prize. He rejuvenates himself on annual treks along France’s network of long-distance hiking trails.
Robert Cahn is Senior Scientist, Emeritus at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He graduated in chemistry and physics from Harvard before graduate study in Berkeley. A theoretical particle physicist by training, he has also worked in experimental particle physics and cosmology. He is the author of two advanced textbooks and important results on the Higgs boson, dark energy, and how particle physics influences our everyday lives. He was an active member of Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky, which worked for the freedom of these victims of Soviet oppression.
Copyright of this video and its content belong to Chris Quigg, Robert Cahn and the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. If you'd like to use part or whole of it, please seek written approval by writing to media@physics.ox.ac.uk.
11 окт 2024
