Quote

My interest in matters more directly concerned with the handling of particles was growing, in the meantime, stimulated by many contacts with people understanding accelerators.

I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found.

Bose and Einstein had triggered low-temperature experiments that have led to the discovery of new matter. I owe my work and my Nobel to them.

When I was 16 years old, I assembled a 2.3 million electron volt beta particle accelerator. I went to Westinghouse, I got 400 pounds of translator steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and I assembled a 6-kilowatt, 2.3 million electron accelerator in the garage.

I came to graduate school at Harvard University in 1954. My thesis supervisor, Julian Schwinger, had about a dozen doctoral students at a time. Getting his ear was as difficult as it was rewarding. I called my thesis 'The Vector Meson in Elementary Particle Decays', and it showed an early commitment to an electroweak synthesis.

Experimental high energy physics research is a group effort. I have been very fortunate to have had outstanding students and colleagues who have made invaluable contributions to the research with which I have been associated.

I was scheduled to give my first official press conference that morning anyway, 'cause I was chairman of the Governors Energy Council and I was making a press conference with regard to energy policy.

Nevertheless, if I have at times been able to make original contributions in the accelerator field, I cannot help feeling that to a certain extent my slightly amateur approach in physics, combined with much practical experience, was an asset.

About 1960, it became clear that it was best for me to bring the experimental part of my research program to a close - there was too much to do on the theoretical aspects - and I began the process of winding down the experiments.

I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.