[fantispug]

Absolutely. There are some known anomalies in particle physics (e.g. neutrino oscillations) but for the most part it is insanely robust.

What's really hard is moving from these first principles to modelling real world phenomena; there are huge problems like protein folding, low temperature superconductors and even just predicting properties of new materials and chemicals.

It's still important for some people to work on fundamental physics, but I suspect there is a lot more opportunity in mere phenomenology.