Overview of theoretical prospects for understanding the values of fundamental constants

The membership of a list of ‘ fundamental ’ constants necessarily depends on who is compiling the list. A hydrodynamicist might reasonably include the density and viscosity of water, while an atomic physicist would doubtless include the proton mass and electronic charge. This talk deals with a different sort of list: a list of the constants that appear in the laws of nature at the deepest level that we yet understand, constants whose value we cannot calculate with precision in terms of more fundamental constants, not just because the calculation is too complicated (as for the viscosity of water or the mass of the proton) but because we do not know of anything more fundamental. The membership of such a list of fundamental constants thus reflects our present understanding of fundamental physics. Also, each constant on the list is a challenge for future work, to try to explain its value.