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Directions for questions 48 to 50: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
I did my first degree in Oxford. In my final examination, I was asked about my future plans. I replied, if you give me a first class degree, I will go to Cambridge. If I only get a second, I will stay in Oxford. They gave me a first. I arrived in Cambridge as a graduate student in October 1962. I had applied to work with Fred Hoyle, the principal defender of the steady state theory and the most famous British astronomer of the time. I say astronomer because cosmology was at that time, hardly recognized as a legitimate field, yet that was where I wanted to do my research, inspired by having been on a summer course with Hoyle’s student, Jayant Narlikar. However, Hoyle had enough students already, so to my great disappointment, I was assigned to Dennis Sharma, of whom I had not heard. But it was probably for the best. Hoyle was away a lot, seldom in the department, and I wouldn't have had much of his attention. Sharma, on the other hand, was usually around and ready to talk. I didn't agree with many of his ideas, particularly on Mach's principle, but that stimulated me to develop my own picture.
When I began research, the two areas that seemed exciting were cosmology and elementary particle physics. Elementary, particles was the active, rapidly changing field that attracted most of the best minds, while cosmology and general relativity were stuck where they had been in the 1930s. Feynman has given an amusing account of attending the conference on general relativity and gravitation in Warsaw in 1962. In a letter to his wife, he said, “I am not getting anything out of the meeting. I am learning nothing. Because there are no experiments, this field is not an active one, so few of the best men are doing work in it. The result is that there are hosts of dopes here and it is not good for my blood pressure. Remind me not to come to any more gravity conferences!"
Of course, I wasn't aware of all this when I began my research. But I felt that elementary particles at that time, was too like botany. Quantum electro dynamics, the theory of light and electrons that governs chemistry and the structure of atoms, had been worked out completely in the 40s and 50s. Attention had now shifted to the weak and strong nuclear forces between particles in the nucleus of an atom, but similar field theories didn't seem to work. Indeed, the Cambridge school, in particular, held that there was no underlying field theory. Instead, everything would be determined by unitarity, that is, probability conservation, and certain characteristic patterns in the scattering. With hind sight, it now seems amazing that it was thought this approach would work, but I remember the scorn that was poured on the first attempts at unified field theories of the weak nuclear forces. Yet it is these field theories that are remembered and the analytic Smatrix work is forgotten. I’m very glad I didn't start my research in elementary particles. None of my work from that period would have survived.
Cosmology and gravitation, on the other hand, were neglected fields that were ripe for development at that time. Unlike elementary particles, there was a well defined theory, the general theory of relativity, but this was thought to be impossibly difficult. People were so pleased to find any solution of the field equations, they didn’t ask what physical significance, if any, it had. This was the old school of general relativity that Feynman encountered in Warsaw. But the Warsaw conference also marked the beginning of the renaissance of general relativity, though Feynman could be forgiven for not recognizing it at the time.
I did my first degree in Oxford. In my final examination, I was asked about my future plans. I replied, if you give me a first class degree, I will go to Cambridge. If I only get a second, I will stay in Oxford. They gave me a first. I arrived in Cambridge as a graduate student in October 1962. I had applied to work with Fred Hoyle, the principal defender of the steady state theory and the most famous British astronomer of the time. I say astronomer because cosmology was at that time, hardly recognized as a legitimate field, yet that was where I wanted to do my research, inspired by having been on a summer course with Hoyle’s student, Jayant Narlikar. However, Hoyle had enough students already, so to my great disappointment, I was assigned to Dennis Sharma, of whom I had not heard. But it was probably for the best. Hoyle was away a lot, seldom in the department, and I wouldn't have had much of his attention. Sharma, on the other hand, was usually around and ready to talk. I didn't agree with many of his ideas, particularly on Mach's principle, but that stimulated me to develop my own picture.
When I began research, the two areas that seemed exciting were cosmology and elementary particle physics. Elementary, particles was the active, rapidly changing field that attracted most of the best minds, while cosmology and general relativity were stuck where they had been in the 1930s. Feynman has given an amusing account of attending the conference on general relativity and gravitation in Warsaw in 1962. In a letter to his wife, he said, “I am not getting anything out of the meeting. I am learning nothing. Because there are no experiments, this field is not an active one, so few of the best men are doing work in it. The result is that there are hosts of dopes here and it is not good for my blood pressure. Remind me not to come to any more gravity conferences!"
Of course, I wasn't aware of all this when I began my research. But I felt that elementary particles at that time, was too like botany. Quantum electro dynamics, the theory of light and electrons that governs chemistry and the structure of atoms, had been worked out completely in the 40s and 50s. Attention had now shifted to the weak and strong nuclear forces between particles in the nucleus of an atom, but similar field theories didn't seem to work. Indeed, the Cambridge school, in particular, held that there was no underlying field theory. Instead, everything would be determined by unitarity, that is, probability conservation, and certain characteristic patterns in the scattering. With hind sight, it now seems amazing that it was thought this approach would work, but I remember the scorn that was poured on the first attempts at unified field theories of the weak nuclear forces. Yet it is these field theories that are remembered and the analytic Smatrix work is forgotten. I’m very glad I didn't start my research in elementary particles. None of my work from that period would have survived.
Cosmology and gravitation, on the other hand, were neglected fields that were ripe for development at that time. Unlike elementary particles, there was a well defined theory, the general theory of relativity, but this was thought to be impossibly difficult. People were so pleased to find any solution of the field equations, they didn’t ask what physical significance, if any, it had. This was the old school of general relativity that Feynman encountered in Warsaw. But the Warsaw conference also marked the beginning of the renaissance of general relativity, though Feynman could be forgiven for not recognizing it at the time.
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