QUO VADIS, PHYSICA?

The history of physics is short, compared with mathematics and astronomy, starting in about 1800. After the first century of electrodynamics and thermodynamics, come 60 years of quantum, relativity, and nuclei. In the last 50 years, physicists have profited from an incredible boom in their research. That is threatened now, because the applications of physics have become very complicated engineering. At the other end of the spectrum, a lot of esoteric physics is going nowhere. It is not the job of the universities to produce specialists. Young people have to learn and get a chance to use their intelligence and imagination. Professors have to show them the way, and industry has to have confidence in them.