The aims of the physicist... are in part purely intellectual: he strives to understand the universe on account of the intellectual pleasure derived from the pursuit, but he is upheld in it by the knowledge that the study of nature's secrets is the ordained method by which the greatest good and happiness shall finally come to the human race.

The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland, The Highest Aims of the Physicist (p. 678), The Johns Hopkins Press. 1902