HOW did the universe begin? What can the unknown teach me? What is life all about?
This teenager’s life spun off to a different direction when, after being born and living in America for years, he and his family moved to Israel.
According to Wikipedia, the young David discovered and then immersed himself in Hebrew and physics, two worlds he had not known until then.
At the age of 13, David decided he wanted to be a theoretical physicist.
In 2004, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to American particle physicist and string theorist David Jonathan Gross, his first graduate student Frank Wilczek and independent scientist H. David Politzer.
Their discovery of asymptotic freedom explains how a nuclear force holds an atom together by binding the quarks, which are the smallest blocks making up matter.
This finding led to another breakthrough, a new theory on quantum chromodynamics, which, according to the International Peace Foundation, “has brought physics one step closer to fulfilling a grand dream: to formulate a unified theory comprising gravity.”
But of what use is a “theory for everything?”
As one of 21 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates supporting the “Bridges—Dialogues Towards a Culture of Peace,” a program initiated by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation, Gross spoke on “The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics” at the University of San Carlos (USC)-Talamban Campus last Jan. 11.
But as Sun.Star Cebu’s Nancy R. Cudis reported last Jan. 12, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate expounded on the need for a “healthy scientific culture” and “ignorant but intelligent” inquiry to “promote the open-mindedness and tolerance required for peace.”
Gross’ exhortation for all stakeholders to “start working as a planet” promotes the theme of harmony and co-existence in the “Bridges” series, which will be held in the Philippines and Thailand from November 2007 to April 2008.
On Feb. 8, the 2004 Nobel Laureate for Economics Prof. Finn Erling Kydland will talk on peace and economic development in the age of globalization at the USC campus.
For his outstanding contributions to research in particle physics, Gross was awarded the San Carlos Borromeo Award. The USC instituted the award in honor of San Carlos Borromeo, whose service and leadership in the Catholic Reformation period serves to inspire Carolinians with the “need for reforms in public life and demand for personal integrity,” according to a university press release.
Greatness, as Gross shows, lies somewhere between asking the Big Questions and believing that the Profound Answers lie in the kernel known as humanity.
