Quantum Physics Is Nonsense

Theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft reflects on the future

- LEE BILLINGS

IN THE PANTHEON OF MODERN PHYSICS, few figures can match the quiet authority of Gerard 't Hooft. The Dutch theoretical physicist, now a professor emeritus at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has spent much of the past five decades reshaping our understanding of the fundamental forces that knit together reality. But 't Hooft's unassuming, soft-spoken manner belies his towering scientific stature, which is better revealed by the mathematical rigor and deep physical insights that define his work—and by the prodigious numbers of prestigious prizes he has accrued, which include a Nobel Prize, a Wolf Prize, a Franklin Medal, and many more.

His latest accolade, announced last April, is the most lucrative in all of science: a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, worth $3 million, in recognition of 't Hooft's myriad contributions to physics across his long career.

His most celebrated discovery—the one that earned him, along with his former Ph.D. thesis adviser, the late Martinus Veltman, the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics—showed how to make sense of non-Abelian gauge theories, which are complex mathematical frameworks that describe how elementary particles interact. Together, 't Hooft and Veltman demonstrated that these theories could be renormalized, meaning intractable infinite quantities that cropped up in calculations could be tamed in a consistent and precise way. This feat would change the course of science history, laying the groundwork for the Standard Model, the reigning paradigm of particle physics.