In July, more than 350 string theorists from around the world will meet at the University of Michigan. In 1984, the world contained only a few people who could be called string theorists in today's sense.
String theory is an extremely ambitious activity.
For the first time in history, we have a scientific attempt to ask what are the most basic laws that govern the natural universe, and where the laws of nature that allow our universe to exist come from. The theory can address what space and time are and why they exist. It allows gravity and quantum theory to work consistently together in one theory, which has been a notoriously difficult problem. It incorporates all the forces that affect the basic structure of the world. Clearly, formulating and testing any approach that promises so much is worth a great deal of effort.