Anticipations… a continental view of physics and its future

Abstract

Though I greatly value the invitation to speak at this memorable occasion, yet when the day approached I felt more and more worried about what I should say. You may think that that is the usual predicament of a fairly busy man who is in the bad habit of putting off things to the very last moment. I think that the reason for my uneasiness is this time more fundamental. The fact is that, while I tried to ponder the European outlook on the future of physics and physicists, I came to realize that at a similar gathering in Europe I would almost certainly have been asked to speak on just one more aspect of the development of physics during the past twenty-five years, a task which I would have performed with greater ease and at the end of which I might have ventured some hesitating and nebulous remarks about future developments. So let me begin by congratulating the American Institute of Physics, not for its share in the phenomenal development and spectacular successes of American physics during the past 25 years, but rather for the fact that even on a day like this it declines to rest on its laurels and wants to use a few moments of quiet reflection for looking ahead. Is it our tendency to cling to the past which has bereft European physics of some of its impetus? However this may be, I cannot forsake my European background and the only way in which I feel that I can contribute at all to a discussion of the future is to interpret in my personal way some of the predominant trends of the development of recent years.