Professor Tony Hey

Professor Tony Hey (HF 1970-72) My arrival at Caltech in 1970 was a significant culture shock, transitioning from Oxford's more formal environment to the casual Californian lifestyle. Meeting Murray Gell-Mann in an open-necked shirt underscored this change. One of my first challenges was buying a car in Pasadena, a task complicated by the need for a car to visit the used car lots. The concept of "ID" was another hurdle, as British driving licenses were not accepted and my UK passport looked at with suspicion.. Having only seen a photograph of Feynman in his famous ‘Lectures on Physics’ books, I did not at first recognize him when I encountered him unexpectedly in a seminar room. Adjusting to the fast-paced, very interactive research environment at Caltech was a dramatic shift from Oxford. The Caltech theory group's sole focus was on addressing unsolved fundamental problems in physics. Calculating a complicated problem that was useful, but in principle understood, certainly felt as if one was just "doodling in the margins" of science. Being around Feynman and Gell-Mann was both exciting and daunting. Feynman was very involved with the final year graduate students, discussing new experimental results and his 'parton model' over lunch at the Caltech 'Greasy' - as well as telling versions of the famous ‘Feynman stories’ later published in ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’. My most intimidating encounter with Feynman was during an informal lunch-time seminar intended for the experimental high energy physics group. On the theory floor, Feynman and Gell-Mann were having an argument about partons and quarks.  Feynman had come down to the third floor for my seminar with the express intent of pointing out that his parton model made identical predictions to Gell-Mann’s ‘light-cone algebra’ approach if one did not make speculative guesses for the unknown parton distributions! Life at Caltech with these physics legends was a thrilling rollercoaster, full of intellectual challenges and unforgettable experiences.