Bulletin Number Two 1987

A. I think high energy physics is always in the frontier. It is really the driving force for physics: you can see that atomic physics was the high energy physics during the twenties and thirties, nuclear physics was the high energy physics during the forties and fifties. Without high energy physics, sooner or later you reach an end. Certainly the fields you mentioned are very important, and they should also be supported. Generally speaking, the money used in research is still very, very small compared to United States defence, and weapon development. Q. What about the less well-off countries? You just mentioned China. A. Well, China has a very good team of physicists working with us mainly because they can learn new technology. The technology we use is not commercially available. Even for poor countries the amount is still very small compared to other national expenditure. Q. Do you see your research as having any appli cation on different time scales? A. From pure research in high energy physics to application there is normally a twenty- to thirty-year time span. A major development in high energy physics at the end of the last century was the discovery of X-rays and now X-rays are widely used in everything - its application began in the thirties. In the thirties it was the discovery of nuclear fusion, and fission and neutrons. In the fifties, they became a source of energy. So maybe what we are doing can be used in the next century —it is hard to tell. Q. I asked the question because especially in a community like Hong Kong, people who fund research tend to askfo r rather immediate impact on the community. A. Instant impact does not exist, except in tech nical spin-offs, like developments in super conductivity, development of fast computers, data handling and processing. Nevertheless, most of these come from developments in high energy physics. The application of a major dis covery in high energy physics often changes the life of men. Q. What is your opinion on the misuse o f science? A. Misuse of science is like misuse of medicine: it always exists. It is a very unfortunate thing but I do not know what one can do about it. Cer tainly it will be much nicer if the discovery of nuclear fusion and fission is not used in weapons. The basic motivation for people to do research is to satisfy curiosity. I f you don't do it, other people w ill do it. You do not have a monopoly. Q. So preventing the abuse o f science is not within the power o f scientists? A. Certainly not. A scientist can refrain from participating in military research - I do not do any military research —but once the result of our research is known, many countries can use it, some for good, some for bad. But the point is even i f I do not do this research, other people can discover the same thing. Q. You are a very successful physicist ， do you think that there are really born scientists? A. Well, I would say, to be a good scientist, you have to have the following qualities. The most important one is, you have to believe what you are doing is the single most important thing in your life. You have to decide this is the thing you are going to do and nothing can stop you, and you do not really care whether you will get good results or not —most of the time you do not get good results. The secondmost important thing is, you really have to have some self- confidence. The progress of science is always achieved through a few people. It is not the majority who control the progress of science, it is the minority. It is only one or two persons who manage to completely revolutionize people's ideas. To revolutionize means to destroy the old ideas which most people believe in. To do that, you certainly have to have self- confidence. The third thing is something which I'll call intuition, namely to choose a topic, and that is something a little bit hard to define. Some people can choose a topic and some people cannot. I would say those three are the important ingredients of a successful scientist. The fourth one is luck; some people are luckier than others. INTERVIEW 19