George Gamow Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

Before we can discuss the basic problem of the origin of our universe, we must ask ourselves whether such a discussion is necessary.

George Gamow
The universe is popping all over the place.

George Gamow
One of the students asked whether the "Chadwick neutron" was the same "neutron" proposed by Pauli for the phenomena of beta transformation. "No," answered Fermi, "il neutrone di Pauli e mol to piupiccolo, cio e un neutrino." The name stuck.

George Gamow
My telescope Has dashed your hope; Your tenets are refuted. Let me be terse: Our universe Grows daily more diluted!

George Gamow
Whereas all humans have approximately the same life expectancy the life expectancy of stars varies as much as from that of a butterfly to that of an elephant.

George Gamow
The Neutron has come to be. Loaded with Mass is he. Of Charge, forever free. Pauli, do you agree?

George Gamow
Radiation is like butter, which can be bought or returned to the grocery store only in quarter-pound packages, although the butter as such can exist in any desired amount (not less, though, than one molecule!).

George Gamow
Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life.

George Gamow
In wave mechanics there are no impenetrable barriers,. as the British physicist R.H. Fowler [also] put it after my lecture on that subject at the Royal Society of London.

George Gamow
To keep order and preserve the properties, I never permit more than two electrons to follow the same track; a ménage a trios always gives a lot of trouble, you know.

George Gamow
They say "curiosity kills the cat"; I say "Curiosity makes a scientist."

George Gamow
Two Monopoles worshipped each other, And all of their sentiments clicked. Still, neither could get to his brother, Dirac was so fearfully strict!

George Gamow
Galaxies are ever spinnik, Stars will burn to final sparrk, Till ourr universe is thinnink And is lifeless, cold and darrk.

George Gamow
Atome prreemorrdiale! All-containeeng Atome! Deesolved eento fragments exceedeengly small. Galaxies formeeng, Each wiz prrimal enerrgy!

George Gamow
So I am just sitting and waiting, listening, and if something exciting comes, I just jump in.

George Gamow
Now, Physicists, take warning, Observe this sober test. When new fleas are a-borning Make sure they're fully dressed!

George Gamow
The Pauli Effect, a mysterious phenomenon which is not and probably never will be understood on a purely materialistic basis.

George Gamow
My mass is zero, My Charge is the same. You are my hero, Neutrino's my name.

George Gamow
In the beginning God created radiation and ylem. And ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly over the face of the deep.

George Gamow
With five free parameters, a theorist could fit the profile of an elephant.

George Gamow
It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!

George Gamow
If the expansion of the space of the universe is uniform in all directions, an observer located in anyone of the galaxies will see all other galaxies running away from him at velocities proportional to their distances from the observer.

George Gamow
There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

George Gamow
We do not know why they [elementary particles] have the masses they do; we do not know why they transform into another the way they do; we do not know anything! The one concept that stands like the Rock of Gibraltar in our sea of confusion is the Pauli [exclusion] principle.

George Gamow
I decided to get Ph. D. in experimental physics because experimental physicists have their own room in the Institute where they can hang their coat, whereas theoretical physicists have to hang their coat at the entrance.

George Gamow