Irish Physicist Quotes

John Stewart Bell
Osborne Reynolds
George Francis FitzGerald
George Johnstone Stoney

To know the quantum mechanical state of a system implies, in general, only statistical restrictions on the results of measurements. It seems interesting to ask if this statistical element be thought of as arising, as in classical statistical mechanics, because the states in question are averages over better defined states for which individually the results would be quite determined. These hypothetical 'dispersion free' states would be specified not only by the quantum mechanical state vector but also by additional 'hidden variables' - 'hidden' because if states with prescribed values of these variables could actually be prepared, quantum mechanics would be observably inadequate.

John Stewart Bell
John Stewart Bell
Knowledge is alive. It creeps, it grows, it crawls, it jumps. It never stays quite still. We add to it. We tear it in pieces. We put it together again, and then it is a different knowledge.

When interpreting nature's work, we are obliged frequently to speak of high numbers and small fractions.

George Johnstone Stoney
George Johnstone Stoney
The discoverer of a law is he who first generalizes whether he has or has not taken part in the discovery of the facts on which the generalization is made.

Osborne Reynolds
Osborne Reynolds
There is, perhaps, no scientific inquiry more full of human interest, than the study of the nature of heat, and the manner in which matter in general is affected by it. No branch of physical science is so intimately connected with the everyday occupations of life, and, consequently, none of them interests mankind more closely.

When a student is told, as an explanation of the word "mass," that it means "quantity of matter," there is an appeal made from the obscure to the more obscure. It is a case of huggermugger.

George Francis FitzGerald
George Francis FitzGerald