Random note to Uncle Al:
Dear Al:
Could not help but note your comments on
success in Physics, especially the "feeling lucky" comment directed at the young and the enthusiastic.
Regarding the depths of theoretical physics, you may well be correct.
By no means however is particle physics or hi-energy physics or GUT theory the answer to everything.
About 20 years ago, I finished a major in chemistry and biochemistry and spent a year in the graduate physical chemistry, before coming to believe that wall-papering my playpen with the quantum mechanics of very small molecules and radicals most likely would NOT earn a good living for me. So, I bailed out and went to med school.
Now, 20 years later,an internal medicine physician, I intensely miss the disciplines of the physical sciences- and worse, I can remember the individual classes and problems as if it were yesterday.
I have long been aware that medicine and biology in general is art, rather than science. The point is this: there remains a vast area of biophysics and biophysical chemistry in the realm of phenomena far from thermal equilibrium whose mathematical description in closed form is either very hard or impossible, but the understanding of which is crucial to evolving medicine into a more mature scientific discipline. All these years later I am seriously entertaining the idea of pursuing chemical physics with a view toward work in the areas that Prigogine made so famous sveral years back. There are many tracts on non-linear thermodynamics, including ones by Prigogine himself. In areas such as these, I am willing to hazard a guess that pushing existing techniques in new directions and modestly advancing theory is still a possible endeavor- and in areas like this, one probably does not have to develop a profound revolution in physical thought, such as in Feynman's QED or Einstein's special relativity. Perhaps a bit of humility is advisable on your part, especially when lecturing to those who are young, eager and enthusiastic enough to devote many years to pluming the depths of physics?
