In the world of quarks and neutrinos, Sheldon Lee Glashow is a known name. In fact, the quarks acquired a ‘charm’ due to his theory. Glashow, now in his 70s, is in turn more than charmed by the Taj Mahal. “This is my first visit to India and I can now go to my grave happy that I saw the Taj Mahal. Everyone should. It is a blessing to humanity.”

Sheldon Lee Glashow along with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for their formulating the electroweak theory, which helped unite the electromagnetism and the weak force.

Weinberg and Salam had already done this independently but could apply it only to one class of particles (leptons). Glashow found a way to extend their theory to baryons (eg: protons and neutrons) and mesons. In the process he had to ‘invent’ a new property for quarks, (the fundamental particles). This property was termed ‘charm’.

On a visit to India at the behest of Honeywell and the VTU, the professor addressed students and faculty on the topic of his “favourite particles” and the nature of scientific discovery. In conversation with Jayalakshmi K of Deccan Herald, he shared some of these.

The academia industry relationship is a favourite topic, as he spoke of how “industrial science has made enormous contributions to basic science in the past”. But today, “very few industrial labs are doing basic research. The funding for basic research has been decreasing. So you have significant decrease in kids who want to do basic research. And without doing basic research you cannot inspire kids to go into applied research.”

Glashow firmly believes that basic science cannot be done without. “An engineer who does not understand basic physics won’t be a good engineer. The technology today is changing rapidly and instead of teaching them that, it makes more sense to teach basic science through which he/she can adapt to changes in technology.”

At Harvard and Boston University, where he now teaches, there is a plan to design new programmes in material science to encourage synergy between various sciences, “which also includes biology given that new materials going to be used are biological”.

Today, there is demand for inter-disciplinary learning, for new breeds of scientists and engineers, for “new communication between the sciences”. He cites the energy example. “In my country, ethanol is being touted as an alternative fuel. It is insane! The energy in growing the corn is comparable to energy you get from it, so its no big deal. In Brazil it is done differently as they source it from sugarcane and they have plenty of sunshine. It makes sense. But in the US it has only meant corn costs going up dramatically, which in turn has pushed up meat cost, and hence the inflation. Complete insanity! We have what is an ‘anti-solution’ for energy needs!”

To what are some fundamental questions unanswered in physics, he talks of the Cern collider, which will hopefully answer questions of mass and also the nature of Dark Matter. Cosmology is another area which has evolved from a fanciful, philosophical subject to a quantitative one. “We can say with a 10 per cent precision the age of the universe and its composition. We have developed sufficiently precise numbers to explain in detail the origin and future of the universe.”

On what he believes is the plausible model for the cosmos, Glashow has no doubts that it will always be based on the Big Bang model. “We won’t need a new model as Big Bang has been established conclusively but if you want to go beyond to seemingly stupid questions like what was there before, we don’t know. But that is not for a lack of a model. There are dreams of a superstring theory to give a more detailed account but it’s not more than a dream.”

Why does he believe in a simple, elegant model for the universe? Pleased with the question, he answers through the words of a fellow physicist Percy Bridgeman of how “people who have faith in simplicity of nature are the ones who have contributed most to science! It is a useful faith!”

Extending the same thinking, he ascribes talks of multiple universes as “a way of giving up”. Explaining how there are six types of quarks that make up all matter, he notes how the masses of most constituent particles fall with 20-30 numbers. “Why these are what they are, we have no answers. But these people who talk of multiverses will liken this to why planets move in orbits of a certain radius! And then they will say there are many universes and on this one, these are the numbers. It denies the faith that Percy spoke about. That there are simple answers.”

Finally, as the professor notes, “our universe is even more weirder and wonderful than we believed in the past. It expanded rapidly, slowed down and now is expanding rapidly again. It is a strange history and we don’t understand much of it. But then, we have not been good at the ‘why’ questions as much as the ‘how’ ones!”