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

Either we've seen the birth of the universe, or we've seen a pile of pigeon shit.

Arno Allan Penzias

The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding.

Every star around us is a favorable target for human migration. You don't have to wait for just those stars that happen to have earthlink planets; they may be very few and far between.

Gerard K. O'Neill

I do not aspire to a historian's standards of completeness, accuracy, or impartiality.

The modern history of instruments and the patterns of their use may lack the glamour of the history of our over arching theoretical constructs. Nonetheless, these bubbling, sparking, clanking devices remain the weft and the warp of physics.

To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come.

Astronomy is probably the oldest of all the sciences. It differs from virtually all other science disciplines in that it is not possible to carry out experimental tests in the laboratory.

There is no concept in the whole field of physics which is more difficult to understand than is the concept of entropy, nor is there one which is more fundamental.

All the richness of structure observed in the natural world is not a consequence of the complexity of physical law, but instead arises from the many-times repeated application of quite simple laws.

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

George Sudarshan