20th-century Physicist Quotes

There are very few things that can be proved rigorously in condensed matter physics.

Anthony James Leggett

History of science played a very important role for me. Before I knew well how to do an experiment, I knew why Joliot has missed the neutron, why his wife missed the fission, why they succeeded in having artificial radioactivity, and even why they almost missed the other things, by doing very nice experiments, but didn't come to the conclusion. That is science. Science is doubt, is research. It is not something which is – and that is the danger of teaching – which is too academic and which the people explain you it is like the logic thing that comes out of the computer, which is not true. You have intuition, you have passion.

Georges Charpak

Questions about a theory which do not affect its ability to predict experimental results correctly seem to me quibbles about words, rather than anything more substantial, and I am quite content to leave such questions to those who derive some satisfaction from them.

It is so difficult to find something interesting and new, but instead of helping me to develop fledgling ideas in their infancy, you guys immediately look for a way to attack them.

In electron microscopy, the difficulties took considerably more time to surmount, and therefore the doubters held the field for a longer period. I can, however, also confirm from my own experience the observation of my colleagues that the doubt of the others has the advantage of leaving the field uncrowded. Mostly, this is understood only much later, in the beginning one is very disappointed.

Astronomers are very brave and bold, and make vast assumptions based on very little data. Very clever, though. In Dennis Brian

Arthur Leonard Schawlow

We don't know where breakthroughs will come from and there is no guarantee that they will come from a popular area which is currently drawing a lot of attention. I think the natural pattern is that something new, something which no one was paying attention to before appears when there is a bottleneck. It would be a serious mistake to nip things like this in the bud.

Makoto Kobayashi

The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.

Jack Steinberger

Nature is as it is because this is the only possible nature consistent with itself.

The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil…. We [will] start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century.

David Goodstein

If many years go by in a field in which no significant new facts come to light, the field sharpens up the opinions and gives the appearance that the problem is solved.

The constant questioning of our values and achievements is a challenge without which neither science nor society can remain healthy.

Aage Niels Bohr

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.

Philip Warren Anderson

Not only God knows, I know, and by the end of the semester, you will know.

Coleman used to start his field theory course saying this

One result of unimaginative, mechanistic thinking was that societies eventually ceased to burn people at the stake for witchcraft.

George Sudarshan

In the absence of a firm theoretical basis for the law [conservation of baryon number], we can only conclude that it is known to be true with great accuracy.

Maurice Goldhaber

Quantum physics is no longer an abstract theory for specialists. We must now absolutely include it in our education and also in our culture.

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

It was a little over fifty years ago that George Uhlenbeck and I introduced the concept of spin. It is therefore not surprising that most young physicists do not know that spin had to be introduced. They think that it was revealed in Genesis or perhaps postulated by Sir Isaac Newton, which most young physicists consider to be about simultaneous.

Samuel Abraham Goudsmit

Erwin with his psi can do Calculations quite a few. But one thing has not been seen Just what psi really mean.

It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought.

Edwin Thompson Jaynes

Knowledge is alive. It creeps, it grows, it crawls, it jumps. It never stays quite still. We add to it. We tear it in pieces. We put it together again, and then it is a different knowledge.

John Lighton Synge

Never go to a public lavatory in London. I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.

A really good scientist is one who knows how to draw correct conclusions from incorrect assumptions.

Otto Robert Frisch

There are many examples in physics showing that higher precision revealed new phenomena, inspired new ideas, or confirmed or dethroned well-established theories.

You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding.