The material in 'The Lightness of Being' reflects the scope of the author's research. Wilczek also contributes an occasional Reference Frame column to 'Physics Today'. His breadth and depth make him a sought after speaker for colloquia and public lectures. Recurring themes are the richness of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and the alluring ideas of unification. His research has spanned almost all aspects of theoretical particle physics, with significant forays into condensed-matter physics and dense nuclear matter (condensed quark matter, one might say). Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT and a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 'The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces', Frank Wilczek confronts quantum field theory head on, demystifying not only wave-particle duality but also the origin of mass more ยป for hadrons (that is, everyday matter). Perhaps the root of the problem is that most popularizations of quantum mechanics and of particle physics shy away from quantized fields, the natural language for microscopic phenomena. That key insight seems to be underappreciated, given the awe and mysticism that permeate most nontechnical discussions of modern physics. ![]() How can an electron be both a wave and a particle? At the same time? Because it is a quantum field.
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