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Leon M. Lederman Quotes
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Neutrinos... win the minimalist contest: zero charge, zero radius, and very possibly zero mass.
Leon M. Lederman
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The better theories are verifiable. Once upon a time that was the sine qua non of any theory. Nowadays, addressing events at the Big Bang, we face, perhaps for the first time, a situation in which a theory may never be experimentally tested.
Leon M. Lederman
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The aether: Invented by Isaac Newton, reinvented by James Clerk Maxwell. This is the stuff that fills up the empty space of the universe. Discredited and discarded by Einstein, the aether is now making a Nixonian comeback. It's really the vacuum, but burdened by theoretical, ghostly particles.
Leon M. Lederman
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The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.
Leon M. Lederman
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During an intense period of lab work, the outside world vanishes and the obsession is total. Sleep is when you can curl up on the accelerator floor for an hour.
Leon M. Lederman
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We hope to explain the entire universe in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T-shirt.
Leon M. Lederman
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In the 1990s the United States, not to be left too far behind, is inching toward the metric system.
Leon M. Lederman
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Neutrinos have yet to play the role which Rutherford designed for his alpha particles, but... there is still hope that the analogues exploration may take place.
Leon M. Lederman
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If the basic idea is too complicated to fit on a T-shirt, it's probably wrong.
Leon M. Lederman
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When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night.
Leon M. Lederman
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I started out as a molecules kid. In high school and early college I loved chemistry, but I gradually shifted toward physics, which seemed cleaner - odorless, in fact.
Leon M. Lederman
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Colleague reader, please read this to your uncertain teenager con brio! Tell him or her that (1) experiments often fail, and (2) they don't always fail.
Leon M. Lederman
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One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it.
Leon M. Lederman
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The "naked" electron is an imaginary object cut off from the influences of the field, whereas a "dressed" electron carries the imprint of the universe.
Leon M. Lederman
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Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time.
Leon M. Lederman
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I sometimes think about the tower at Pisa as the first particle accelerator, a (nearly) vertical linear accelerator that Galileo used in his studies.
Leon M. Lederman
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Although atoms are way more than 99.99 percent empty space, I have a real problem in walking through a wall.
Leon M. Lederman
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The laws of nature must have existed before even time began in order for the beginning to happen. We say this, we believe it, but can we prove it?
Leon M. Lederman
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Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage.
Leon M. Lederman
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A theoretical physicist can spend his entire lifetime missing the intellectual challenge of experimental work, experiencing none of the thrills and dangers - the overhead crane with its ten-ton load, the flashing skull and crossbones and danger, radioactivity signs. A theorist's only real hazard is stabbing himself with a pencil while attacking a bug that crawls out of his calculations.
Leon M. Lederman
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Science should have no less lofty a goal. My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt.
Leon M. Lederman
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Science is not about status quo. It's about revolution.
Leon M. Lederman
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I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn't doing anything else and I didn't want to look dumb, so I thought I'd pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph. D. before I realized I was pretty good.
Leon M. Lederman
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That's the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat, you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it's fear. Is it right? And it's incredible humor. 'How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid, not to see this?'
Leon M. Lederman
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Where do we stand today compared to Greece circa 400 B.C.? Today's experiment-driven 'standard model' is not all that dissimilar to Democritus's speculative [sic] atomic theory.
Leon M. Lederman
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Leon M. Lederman
Creative Commons
Born:
July 15, 1922
Died:
October 3, 2018
(aged 96)
Bio:
Leon Max Lederman was an American experimental physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988 for his work on neutrinos.
Known for:
The God Particle (1993)
Beyond the God Particle
Quantum Physics for Poets (2010)
Symmetry and the beautiful universe
From quarks to the cosmos (1989)
Leon M. Lederman on Wikipedia
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