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Ivar Giaever Quotes

1929–2025 Norway

Ivar Giaever (April 5, 1929 – June 20, 2025) was a Norwegian physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids."

Norway
Academics
Nobel laureates
Physicists

Random Ivar Giaever quote

10 quotes

If you want to do good research, it's important not to know too much.

If I have learned anything as a scientist it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.

Nobel lecture (1973)

How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and come up with a fraction of a degree?

It is acceptable to debate whether the mass of the proton changes over time, but is the evidence for global warming really incontrovertible? It is a new religion.

The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better.

When the ice age comes, the temperature falls 8 degrees. So maybe we should pollute more, to prevent that?

I would say that the global warming is basically a non-problem. Just leave it alone and it will take care of itself.

They can fiddle with the data. That is what NASA does.

To me the greatest moment in an experiment is always just before I learn whether the particular idea is a good or a bad one. Thus even a failure is exciting, and most of my ideas have of course been wrong. But this time it worked!

Nobel lecture (1973)

Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ivar Giaever (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.