British Scientist Quotes

Alexander Graham Bell

Ernest Rutherford

Paul Dirac

J. J. Thomson

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Henry Bragg

Dorothy Hodgkin

Find out what an odor is - whether it is an emanation and therefore subject to being weighed, or a vibration and therefore capable of being reflected. Odors are becoming more and more important in the worlds of scientific experiments and in medicine - and the need of more knowledge will bring forth more knowledge, as sure as the sun shines.

Alexander Graham Bell

The first thoughts, which gave rise to his Principia, he had, when he retired from Cambridge in 1666 on account of the plague. As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much further than was usually thought: why not as high as the moon? said he to himself.

Henry Pemberton

If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem able to get on very well without it.

It should ever be borne in mind that the primary object of every study ought to be an inward one that of enlarging and elevating the intellect; and the direct aim of science should be the discovery of the principles of unity, order, and connexion, which are everywhere manifest in the universal life of nature.

A scientist who uses only logical reasoning from 'self-evident' principles will soon find himself in a cul-de-sac - like a blind landscape artist.

Physical reality is neither some objective truth "out there" nor a purely subjective experience "in here." It is a uniquely human description of the interaction between humanity and Nature, involving elements of both inner and outer realms.

John Ellis (physicist)

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

Coming out of space and incident on the high atmosphere, there is a thin rain of charged particles known as the primary cosmic radiation.

Physics tend to be dictated by fad and fashion. There are the gurus who dictate the direction in which new ideas grow.

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

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.

In The Renormalization Group method you take a structure you don't understand and convert it to another structure you don't understand. You keep doing it until you finally understand.

Michael Berry (physicist)

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.

The more I think the more bewildered I become.

Charles Galton Darwin

Possibly the best way to agitate a group of jaded but philosophically inclined physicists is to buy them a bottle of wine and mention interpretations of quantum mechanics. It is like opening a Pandora's box. I have been amused to discover that the number of viewpoints often exceeds the number of participants.

It may be objected by some that I have concentrated too much on the dry bones [of thermodynamic theory], and too little on the flesh which clothes them, but I would ask such critics to concede at least that the bones have an austere beauty of their own.

Compare, for instance, the accuracy with which we can describe and foretell the path of a planet with our ignorance of the movements of the atmosphere as dependent on the heat of the sun. The planet keeps to the astronomer's timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.

John Henry Poynting

When scientists begin to wonder... how science is possible at all, which is ultimately what their questioning of the mathematical basis of science is about, they are searching for reassurance, for some proof that there really is a fundamental theory out there in the dark waiting to be hunted down.

David Lindley (physicist)

To regard analogy as an aid to the invention of theories is as absurd as to regard melody as an aid to the composition of sonatas.

Norman Robert Campbell

Since we find it difficult to make a suitable model of a certain type, Nature must find it difficult too. This argument neglects the possibility that Nature may be cleverer than we are. It even neglects the possibility that we may be cleverer tomorrow than we are today.

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

Anthony James Leggett

It is more important to know the properties of chlorine than the improprieties of Claudius!

Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell

People who get Nobel prizes aren't necessarily the most imaginative of people. People who sometimes find a system, develop a system, do very useful work.

In talking of evolution, it is common to have in mind a tree.

Russell Stannard