Time & Perspective Quote by James Cronin

A decade described as "glorious" tells you as much about institutional culture as it does about scientific discovery. James Cronin, a physicist who knew both the grind and the thrill of high-stakes experiments, is quietly foregrounding a rarely celebrated ingredient in research: permission. The first sentence is almost administratively bland, naming the director and noting his support. That plainness is the point. Cronin frames Reynolds's role not as visionary genius but as enabler - someone who removed friction, trusted a young scientist, and didn’t smother initiative under supervision masquerading as rigor.

"Work independently" reads like a modest request, but in big-lab physics it's a political achievement. Labs run on hierarchies, budgets, turf, and the soft power of who gets to fail expensively. Cronin’s gratitude signals an awareness that independence is granted, not assumed, and that career-shaping freedom often depends on a leader willing to let results speak louder than credentials.

Then comes the shift: "There followed for ten years..". The cadence is almost biblical, a quiet testimony. It compresses uncertainty, setbacks, and long nights into a single arc, implying that the conditions - not constant euphoria - made the work feel expansive. Calling it "glorious" isn’t sentimental; it’s a claim about what science can be when the bureaucracy loosens its grip. The subtext is a critique dressed as reminiscence: most researchers never get ten years like that, and it shouldn’t be a rare blessing.