16 quotes
Don't let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department.
Attributed
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
Attributed Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (1973)
When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all — except life.
Attributed The Wit and Wisdom of the 20th Century : A Dictionary of Quotations (1987)
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Attributed Rutherford at Manchester (1962)
We've got no money, so we've got to think.
Attributed
I must confess it was very unexpected and I am very startled at my metamorphosis into a chemist.
Attributed
We're like children who always want to take apart watches to see how they work.
Attributed
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
Attributed
I have broken the machine and touched the ghost of matter.
Attributed
I was brought up to look at the atom as a nice hard fellow, red or grey in colour, according to taste.
Attributed
I know what the atom looks like!
Attributed
That which is not measurable is not science. — also attributed to Lord Kelvin
Attributed
"...Rutherford never spent more than £2500 a year on his research programme. He resisted suggestions that an industrial appeal might provide him with more money and he did not believe in the economic significance of any of the work he was doing. He used to boast that ‘we have no money, so we shall have to think’."
Attributed
It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery—a bolt from the blue, as it were—you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man on another, and it is this mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected.
Attributed The Birth of a New Physics (1959)
The first point that arises is the atom. I was brought up to look at the atom as a nice hard fellow, red or grey in colour, according to taste. In order to explain the facts, however, the atom cannot be regarded as a sphere of material, but rather as a sort of wave motion of a peculiar kind. The theory of wave-mechanics, however bizarre it may appear... has the astonishing virtue that it works, and works in detail, so that it is now possible to understand and explain things which looked almost impossible in earlier days. One of the problems encountered is the relation between the electron, an atom and the radiation produced by them jointly; the new mechanics states the type of radiation emitted with correct numerical relations. When applied to the periodic table, a competent and laborious mathematician can predict the periodic law from first principles.
Attributed
I came into the room which was half-dark and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience, and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the Earth, where my views conflicted with his.
To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me.
Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source [of heat] was discovered. That prophetic utterance referred to what we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.
Attributed