This reminds me of the story set in ~1900, when the gray-beard physicist tells his student not to study physics because all the big questions have been answered, and physics as a science will end in a few years.

Which also reminds me of a comment I just read about the singularity coming within 20 years. It just shows us how limited and distorted our vision of the future of science truly is.

That student was (supposedly) Max Planck that went on to solve Black Body radiation and help give birth to Quantum Mechanics.

In the same vein... There is also a book by Stephen Hawking called "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics: An Inaugural Lecture" from 1980... http://www.amazon.com/End-Sight-Theoretical-Physics-Inaugura...

Heh... Interesting writing style... "Like a troubled teenager, the proton is a mess inside and just about impossible to figure out."

I think I'll go now and learn as much as I can about the strong force. Sounds like something I won't learn about in school much.

They didn't quite do it.

They made a simulation which matches reality pretty well, but they worked backwards: they knew the value they wanted and kept tweaking the simulation till it worked.

That's not quite as exciting as being able to calculate it from first principles.