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Hooft, G. 't
Oral history interview with Gerard 't Hooft, 2021 April 8.
Interview with Gerard 't Hooft, University Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. 't Hooft considers the possibility that the g-2 muon anomaly experiment at Fermilab is suggestive of new physics, and he reflects broadly on the current shortcomings in our understanding of quantum mechanics and general relativity. 't Hooft recounts his childhood in postwar Holland and the influence of his great uncle, the Nobel Prize winner Frits Zernike and his uncle, the theoretical physicist Nico van Kampen. He describes his undergraduate education at Utrecht University where he got to know Martinus Veltman, with whom he would pursue a graduate degree and ultimately share the Nobel Prize. 't Hooft explains the origins of what would become the Standard Model and the significance of Yang-Mills fields and Ken Wilsons theory of renormalization. He describes Veltmans pioneering use of computers to calculate algebraic manipulations and why questions of scaling were able to be raised for the first time. 't Hooft discusses his postdoctoral appointment at CERN, his ideas about grouping Feynman diagrams together, and how he became involved in quantum gravity research and Bose condensation. He explains the value in studying instantons for broader questions in QCD, the significance of Hawkings work on the black hole information paradox, the holographic principle, and why he has diverged with string theorists. 't Hooft describes being present at the start of supersymmetry, and the growing buzz that culminated in winning the Nobel Prize. He describes his overall interest in the past twenty years in thinking more deeply about quantum mechanics and he places the foundational disagreement between Einstein and Bohr in historical context. At the end of the interview, 't Hooft surveys the limitations that prevent us from understanding how to merge quantum mechanics and general relativity and why this will require an understanding of how to relate the set of all integer numbers to phenomena of the universe.
Gerard 't Hooft is a University Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He completed his graduate studies at Utrecht University and postdoctoral research at CERN. In 1999, 't Hooft was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, alongside his thesis advisor Martinus Veltman.
Coleman, Sidney, 1937-2007
Glashow, Sheldon L.
Hooft, G. 't
Kampen, N. G. van
Veltman, Martinus.
Wilson, Kenneth G. (Kenneth Geddes), 1936-2013
Zernike, Frits, 1888-1966
European Organization for Nuclear Research
Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht
Black holes (Astronomy)
Bose-Einstein condensation.
Electromagnetism.
General relativity (Physics)
Holography
Nobel Prize winners
Quantum chromodynamics
Quantum theory
Renormalization (Physics)
Standard model (Nuclear physics)
Supersymmetry
Weak interactions (Nuclear physics)
Yang-Mills theory
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA
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