The study of nature is traditionally divided into different disciplines:
astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, physics, zoology, etc.
But nature itself is a seamless fabric. The great American naturalist
John Muir expressed this idea when he said, “When we try to pick out
anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
When Don Lincoln and his colleagues at Fermilab in Batavia,
Illinois explore the inner space of quarks they are also exploring the
outer space of the cosmos. Quarks are hitched to the cosmos.
Understanding nature’s fundamental particles is part of the grand
quest of understanding the universe. Don Lincoln never lets us forget
that on this journey from quarks to the cosmos! The spirit of
Leucippus of Miletus and Democritus of Abdera is still alive in Don
of Batavia.
Don is a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
(Fermilab), the home of the Tevatron, the world’s most powerful
accelerator. Currently Don is a member of one of the two very large
colliding beams experiments at Fermilab. Such experiments are dedicated
to the study of the nature of fundamental particles when protons
and antiprotons collide after being accelerated near the velocity
of light. He works at the very frontier of the subject about which
he writes.