20th-century Biologist Quotes

Research consists of formulation of imaginative hypotheses that are open to falsification by experiment.

The fundamental problem in the origin of species is not the origin of differences in appearance, since these arise at the level of the geographical race, but the origin of genetic segregation. The test of species-formation is whether, when two forms meet, they interbreed and merge, or whether they keep distinct.

The downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.

Massimo Pigliucci

I liked to use my face mask more than the diving helmet for most occasions. I was learning to hold my breath longer now and could go down almost as deep without the helmet which limited my movements...

The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory—founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

The study of how substances alter gene expression is part of the field of epigenetics. Some chemical exposures appear to turn on and turn off genes in ways that disregulate cell growth and predispose for cancer. From this perspective, our genes are less the command-and-control masters of our cells and more like the keys of piano, with the environment as the hands of the pianist.

Sandra Steingraber

In their exploration of the submicroscopic world of atomic nuclei, physicists are like men groping in a dark cave with a flashlight that goes on for only an instant and each time lights only a tiny corner of the cave.

Donald A. Glaser

The persistent pattern of no change within samples, coupled with the abrupt appearance of new species — organisms marked with anatomical innovations — had to be telling us something about the way the evolutionary process works.

You see, if E. O. Wilson says that Indian scientists should do taxonomy, now of course, someone will say that you are preventing them from doing the sort of high science that is done elsewhere. So it should not come from there, it should come from us. I think that we must recognize where we have the advantages and where we have the disadvantages.

Raghavendra Gadagkar

Life isn't about the final destination or the accomplishments and accolades; it's about the journey and the opportunities for learning—and how we grow as a result.

Wisdom, the highest product of the human mind, comes late; the young are rarely wise and are not expected to be.

Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.

I don't know exactly what you guys want to do, but let me tell you why you should do it with fruit flies.

Eric F. Wieschaus

As biomedical research continues to provide us with greater understanding and with powerful new tools, the scientific community has, I think, a dual responsibility. One is to push forward the frontiers to make medical advances possible, to understand what cancer is, to develop new ways of treating cancer, to prevent heart disease, and to develop ways of preventing, ultimately, disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and depression. But science also has a second responsibility to society, which is to point out what we need to be concerned about as a society and to bring to bear humane, balanced, and thoughtful ways of dealing with the advances that come from biomedical research. Scientists need to speak to these issues.

W. Maxwell Cowan

Significant advances in science often have a peculiar quality: they contradict obvious, commonsense opinions.

With its hundred billion nerve cells, with their hundred trillion interconnections, the human brain is the most complex phenomenon in the known universe - always, of course, excepting the interaction of some six billion such brains and their owners within the socio-technological culture of our planetary ecosystem!

To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts, and to do the science of geographical ecology is to search for patterns of plants and animal life that can be put on a map.

Robert H. MacArthur

Concepts are games we play with our heads; methods are games we play with our hands, which at times are so handy they can be played without a head.

Frank Edwin Egler

For over two billion years, through the apparent fancy of her endless differentiations and metamorphosis, the Cell, as regards its basic physiological mechanisms, has remained one and the same. It is life itself, and our true and distant ancestor.

Science is imagination in the service of the verifiable truth and that service is indeed communal. It cannot be rigidly planned. Rather, it requires freedom and courage and the plural contributions of many different kinds of people who must maintain their individuality while giving to the group.

It is not extraordinary that young taxonomists are trained like performing monkeys, almost wholly by imitation, and that in only the rarest cases are they given any instruction in taxonomic theory.

Human power, which mounted slowly indeed through the eons of prehistory and somewhat more rapidly after the advent of the sword and pen, has gathered momentum with logarithmic sweep since the dawn of modern science. Today it seems to be rocketing into outer space with the incredible energy of atomic fission.

H. Bentley Glass

Scientific knowledge and understanding is a communal achievement, the sum of a multitude of contributions from many different people. Any individual may feel a certain justifiable pride if he knows that he has added one brick to the structure.

C. H. Waddington

What mechanism can it be that results in the production of homologous organs, the same 'patterns', in spite of their not being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has not been answered