1067. A Day in the Life: What's It Really Like to Be a Theoretical Physicist?

“The students I’ve enjoyed most are the ones who are clearly smarter than I am. Every once in a while you get these amazing students, sometimes a group of amazing students, who just blow you away and say ‘No, professor, that’s not right.’ And they’re right. And you’re wrong. That’s the biggest pleasure in the world.”

Professor Tom Banks grew up in Brooklyn NY and has lived in OR, MA, CA, NJ, GA and Israel. He was determined to be a theoretical physicist since high school and is a founding member of the New High Energy Theory Center at Rutgers, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He works in particle physics, cosmology, condensed matter physics and the attempt to quantize Einstein’s theory of gravity. He’s still active in research at the age of 71.