English Physicist Quotes

James Prescott Joule

James Chadwick

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

Edward Appleton

George Paget Thomson

Nevill Francis Mott

Brian Cox

Deeper understanding confers that most precious thing - wonder.

Your father bears an iron reed
Filled with a flame that makes us bleed;
Your kindly mother loves to tear
Feathers and skin to deck her hair.

I am much puzzled by some recent results as to the density of nitrogen, and shall be obliged if any of your chemical readers can offer suggestions as to the cause. According to two methods of preparation I obtain quite distinct values.

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

The history of science has proved that fundamental research is the lifeblood of individual progress and that the ideas which lead to spectacular advances spring from it.

Edward Appleton

I shall lose no time in repeating and extending these experiments, being satisfied that the grand agents of nature are by the Creator's fiat indestructible, and that whatever mechanical force is expended an exact equivalent of heat is always obtained.

James Prescott Joule

Neither physical science nor psychology can ever 'explain' human consciousness. To me then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man.

Nevill Francis Mott

The influence of science on men's lives comes in two rather different ways — one through the ideas themselves, and the other through their material consequences.

George Paget Thomson

It must be confessed that the new quantum mechanics is far from satisfying the requirements of the layman who seeks to clothe his conceptions in figurative language. Indeed, its originators probably hold that such symbolic representation is inherently impossible. It is earnestly to be hoped that this is not their last word on the subject, and that they may yet be successful in expressing the quantum postulate in picturesque form.

H. Stanley Allen

Man may almost with propriety be said to be a meteorologist by nature: he is naturally placed in such a state of dependence upon the elements, that to watch their vicissitudes and anticipate their disturbances, becomes a necessary portion of the labor to which he is born.

John Frederic Daniell

Since the atom, as a whole, is neutral, there must be a positive charge associated with the atom equal in amount to the sum of the negative charges. The electrical forces between the positive and negative charges preserve the equilibrium of the atom.