German Scientist Quotes

A physicist must be able to saw with a file and to file with a saw.

The universe is infinite in all directions.

There prevails here [Charleston] a finer manner of life, and on the whole, there are more evidences of courtesy than in the northern cities.

Johann David Schoepf

When we are confronted with facts which we see no possibility of understanding save on a single hypothesis, even though it be an undemonstratable one, we are naturally led to accept the hypothesis, at least until a better one can be found.

August Weismann

Much testing; accuracy and precision in experiment; no guesswork or self-deception.

Developmental mechanics...is the doctrine of the causes of organic forms.

What good does all scientific progress do if it cannot be communicated? Do we really understand the world if we cannot explain it without the requirement of long, demanding studies?

Martin Bojowald

The highest object to which the natural sciences are constrained to aim, but which they will never reach, is the determination of the forces, which are present in nature, and of the state of matter at any given moment - that is, the reduction of all the phenomena of nature to mechanics.

Gustav Kirchhoff

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

Error is transient; truth alone is eternal. Error is only the shadow cast by truth, when its rays are arrested on their path by human ignorance and intellectual opacity.

Justus von Liebig

Chemistry without catalysis, would be a sword without a handle, a light without brilliance, a bell without sound.

All statements about the hydrides of boron earlier than 1912, when Stock began to work upon them, are untrue.

As chemists, we must rename [our] scheme and insert the symbols Ba, La, Ce in place of Ra, Ac, Th. As nuclear chemists closely associated with physics, we cannot yet convince ourselves to make this leap, which contradicts all previous experience in nuclear physics.

Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics...would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

Franz Karl Achard

As a consequence, geneticists described evolution simply as a change in gene frequencies in populations, totally ignoring the fact that evolution consists of the two simultaneous but quite separate phenomena of adaptation and diversification.

For the second law [of thermodynamics], I will burn at the stake.

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.

The abundance of substances of which animals and plants are composed, the remarkable processes whereby they are formed and then broken down again have claimed the attention of mankind of old, and hence from the early days they also persistently captivated the interest of chemists.

Hermann Emil Fischer

The chemists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King.

Johann Joachim Becher

Fermentation is the exhalation of a substance through the admixture of a ferment which, by virtue of its spirit, penetrates the mass and transforms it into its own nature.

Andreas Libavius

I would trade all my experimental works for the single idea of the benzene theory.

August Wilhelm von Hofmann

The natural laws are rude unbending powers, which have neither morals nor heart.

The far spaces of the galaxies are teeming with life; but the life-bearing planets are separated by awesome gaps of space and time. We are lost in space — marooned in the small section of the universe assigned to us.

Ideas, like large rivers, never have just one source. Just as the waters of a river near its mouth is composed largely of the waters of many tributaries, so an idea, in its final form, is composed largely of later additions.

The twofold nature of light as a light-wave and as a light-quantum is thus extended to electrons and, further, to atoms: their wave-nature is asserting itself more and more, theoretically and experimentally, as concurrent with their corpuscular nature.

Arnold Sommerfeld