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Quotes from Advice to a Young Scientist — Peter Medawar

1915–1987 England

← All quotes by Peter Medawar

3 quotes

I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He was annoyed, and it did not appease him when I went on to ask how he came to attach such a clear meaning to the notion of lack of intelligence. We never spoke again.

Advice to a Young Scientist (1979)

It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be "interesting" - almost any problem is interesting if it is studied in sufficient depth.

Advice to a Young Scientist (1979)

I believe in "intelligence," and I believe also that there are inherited differences in intellectual ability, but I do not believe that intelligence is a simple scalar endowment that can be quanitified by attaching a single figure to it—an I.Q. or the like.

Advice to a Young Scientist (1979)

Attribution

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