An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

— Ernest Rutherford Attributed Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (1973)

Notes from Wikiquote

If you can't explain your physics to a barmaid it is probably not very good physics. | As quoted in Journal of Advertising Research (March-April 1998) | A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good. | As quoted in The Language of God (2006) by Francis Collins, p. 60

More quotes by Ernest Rutherford

It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. … The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

I do not know if you appreciate the fact that long papers have a way of frightening readers, who feel that they have not time to dip into them.

It is just as surprising as if a gunner fired a shell at a single sheet of paper and for some reason or other the projectile bounded back again.

The study of the radio-active substances and of the discharge of electricity through gases has supplied very strong experimental evidence in support of the fundamental ideas of the existing atomic theory. It has also indicated that the atom itself is not the smallest unit of matter but is a complicated structure made up of a number of smaller bodies.

Radio-activity (1904)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ernest Rutherford (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

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