19th-century Physicist Quotes

A simple calculation shows that from the classical theory follows that we should find a broadening of the beam with the maximum intensity on the place of the beam without field. However, from the quantum theory follows that we should find there no intensity at all, and deflected molecules on both sides. The beam should split up in two beams corresponding to the two orientations of the magnet. The experiment decided in favor of the quantum theory.

Viewing the laws of the electric circuit from the point at which the labours of Ohm has placed us, there is scarcely any branch of experimental science in which so many and such various phenomena are expressed by formulae of such simplicity and generality...

Charles Wheatstone

The discoverer of a law is he who first generalizes whether he has or has not taken part in the discovery of the facts on which the generalization is made.

Osborne Reynolds

The universe is infinite in all directions.

When a student is told, as an explanation of the word "mass," that it means "quantity of matter," there is an appeal made from the obscure to the more obscure. It is a case of huggermugger.

George Francis FitzGerald

The results of my observations are best explained by the assumption that a radiation of very great penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above...

Victor Francis Hess

I have by no means always been numbered among those who pluck the fruit; I have been repeatedly only one of those who planted or cared for the trees.

The scientific paradox is only an exception to some familiar but too inclusive generalization. It, therefore, has both the appeal of the riddle and the charm of surprise — the surprise, the instant the truth is seen, of a sudden and unexpected discovery....

William Jackson Humphreys

It is because we do not possess "science" that we have "sciences."

Charles-Eugène Guye

The trouble with Physics at the present time is that there are so many workers making discoveries so fast, and important discoveries too, that it is difficult for any one worker to keep a balanced view of the state of the subject.

Owen Willans Richardson

All our civilization is based on inventions; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves.

Reginald Fessenden

About James Chadwick book:

I have read with pleasure this little book of my friend Dr. J. Chadwick. It is a clear and accurate account of radioactive phenomena written by one who has a first-hand knowledge of the facts.

Of the book 'Radioactivity And Radioactive Substances'

Ernest Rutherford

A soap bubble is a beautiful thing. It appeals to several senses and to many kinds of minds; it is a source of delight to children, and we who know what somewhat of the mysteries of molecular physics which it helps to reveal look at it with admiration.

There is, perhaps, no scientific inquiry more full of human interest, than the study of the nature of heat, and the manner in which matter in general is affected by it. No branch of physical science is so intimately connected with the everyday occupations of life, and, consequently, none of them interests mankind more closely.

Thomas Preston (scientist)

The really fundamental things have a way of appearing to be simple once they have been stated by a genius...

George Yuri Rainich

When interpreting nature's work, we are obliged frequently to speak of high numbers and small fractions.

George Johnstone Stoney

The facts which our theories enable us to discover, subsist and are linked together long after these theories have disappeared. Out of the materials of former edifices overthrown, new dwellings are constantly being reconstructed.

Lucien Poincaré

In consequence of my measurements of Kerr's magnetooptical phenomena, the thought occurred to me whether the period of the light emitted by a flame might be altered when the flame was acted upon by magnetic force. It has turned out that such an action really occurs.

Individually, man is more or less of an enigma; in the mass he is a mathematical problem.

Astronomy is the distinguished child of the gypsy-like mother, astrology.

Charles Greeley Abbot

Hypotheses are like questions which we put to Nature, but the answers she gives are not simply "yes" and "no;" but it can be so, or it cannot.

Johann Heinrich Jakob Müller

Thus, since it is this power in the atmosphere of storing the heat which makes us live, no less than the sun's rays themselves, we see how the temperature of a planet may depend on considerations quite beside its distance from the sun; and when we discuss the possibility of life in other worlds, we shall do well to remember that Saturn may be possibly a warm world, and Mercury conceivably a cold one.

Samuel Pierpont Langley

A Corpuscle once did oscillate so quickly to and fro,
He always raised disturbances wherever he did go. He struggled hard for freedom against a powerful foe — An atom — who wouldn't let him go.

Discovery, even the most apparently insignificant, will end by being of use to man.

Auguste Piccard

The rotating armatures of every generator and motor in this age of electricity are steadily proclaiming the truth of the relativity theory to all who have ears to hear.