Wilczek, Frank Anthony

Wilczek, Frank Anthony,

1951–, American physicist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Princeton, 1974. Wilczek was a professor at Princeton (1974–80, 1989–2000) and at the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (1980–88). He joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000. Wilczek, David GrossGross, David Jonathan,
1941–, American particle physicist, b. Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1966. Gross was a professor at Princeton from 1969 to 1997, when he joined the faculty at the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara.
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, and David PolitzerPolitzer, Hugh David,
1949–, American physicist, b. Mineola, N.Y., Ph.D. Harvard, 1974. Politzer has been a professor at the California Institute of Technology since 1977.
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 shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their development in 1973 of a mathematical framework that led to quantum chromodynamicsquantum chromodynamics
(QCD), quantum field theory that describes the properties of the strong interactions between quarks and between protons and neutrons in the framework of quantum theory.
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 (QCD), a theory that explains how the nucleus of atoms works. Concerned with strong interactionsstrong interactions,
actions between elementary particles mediated, or carried, by gluons. They are responsible for the binding of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and interactions between quarks.
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, QCD was an important contribution to the standard model of particle physics, which describes all physics in terms of four forces or interactions. Among his books are Longing for teh Harmonies (with B. Devine, 1989), which explores the themes of modern physics, and A Beautiful Question (2015), which examines the role aesthetics plays in physicists' attempts to understand the world.