Steven Weinberg: 'I wanted to be on the in – privy to all the secrets of physics'

The Nobel prize-winning physicist on his quest to write the universal textbook, containing all the laws of natureA chemistry set may be little more than a toy, but for Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, the "bangs and stinks" he produced inspired his quest for the universal textbook, a volume that would explain the laws of nature in a few basic principles.Born in New York in 1933, Weinberg was the first of his family to attend university. His father would have preferred him to follow a career in medicine, but the hand-me-down chemistry set put paid to any medical future. To explain the behaviour of those chemicals meant understanding why atoms worked the way they did. Inspired by the popular science books of George Gamow and Sir James Jeans, Weinberg was drawn to study theoretical physics. "Just like any adolescent presented with a world of secrets, I felt I wanted to be on the in – to be privy to these secrets."Weinberg describes his motivation throughout his career as a desire to contribute to the "ultimate textbook", a book we could imagine existing in some future age in which a few simple principles in chapter one came as close as we could ever get to the ultimate laws of nature. These principles would provide the basis for deducing everything else, the detailed later chapters covering all of physics.Running through much of Weinberg's work has been the importance of symmetry. "Symmetry principles are principles governing the laws of nature that say those law...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Particle physics Features Cern The Observer Interviews Science Source Type: news