Physicists From England

"Cavendish did not stand aloof from other men in a proud or supercilious spirit, refusing to count them his fellows. He felt himself separated from them by a great gulf, which neither they nor he could bridge over, and across which it was vain to stretch hands or exchange greetings. A sense of isolation from his brethren, made him shrink from their society and avoid their presence, but he did so as one conscious of an infirmity, not boasting of an excellence."

"He was like a deaf mute sitting apart from a circle, whose looks and gestures show that they are uttering and listening to music and eloquence, in producing or welcoming which he can be no sharer. Wisely, therefore, he dwelt apart, and bidding the world farewell, took the self imposed vows of a Scientific Anchorite, and, like the Monks of old, shut himself up within his cell. It was a kingdom sufficient for him, and from its narrow window he saw as much of the Universe as he cared to see. It had a throne also, and from it he dispensed royal gifts to his brethren."

"He was one of the unthanked benefactors of his race, who was patiently teaching and serving mankind, whilst they were shrinking from his coldness, or mocking his peculiarities."

"He could not sing for them a sweet song, or create a "thing of beauty" which should be "a joy for ever," or touch their hearts, or fire their spirits, or deepen their reverence or their fervour. He was not a Poet, a Priest, or a Prophet, but only a cold, clear, Intelligence, raying down pure white light, which brightened everything on which it fell, but warmed nothing—a Star of at least the second, if not of the first magnitude, in the Intellectual Firmament."

"[A] prolonged and acrimonious controversy... was for many years carried on and is... hardly... settled regarding the respective claims of different philosophers to be the true discoverer of the nature and composition of water."

"In the year 1781, Cavendish made a long and careful series of experiments... not published till Jan., 1784, when his celebrated... Experiments on Air was read to the royal society."

"In the interval (June, 1783) his friend, Dr. Blagden, visited Paris, and on the authority of Cavendish, gave an account of the experiments proving the composition of water to Lavoisier..."

"[T]his delay between the discovery and the date of publication caused his claims to one of the most marvelous discoveries the world ever saw, to be contested by... James Watt and Lavoisier."

"Cavendish's experiments consisted in exploding, in various proportions, mixtures of and atmospheric air, and of hydrogen and oxygen, and finding as the result a liquid which proved to be pure water. (Priestley and his friend, Mr. [John] Warltire, had made similar experiments, and had noticed the deposition of moisture that followed the explosion, but failed to recognize it anything but the condensation of aqueous vapors in the gases.)"

"The general conclusion to which Cavendish came was, in his own words, "that water consists of dephlogisticated air united with phlogiston," and as dephlogisticated air was his term for oxygen, and phlogiston his term for , this statement corresponds to the modern view of the nature of water introduced by Lavoisier."

"As Lavoisier was from the first accused by the English chemists of having acted unfairly toward them, and as indeed his own claim only dates back to June 25, 1783, he may be dismissed from further consideration; and during the lives of the English claimants there were no public complaints on either side, although Watt, in private letters to his friends, hinted at Cavendish's incapacity and unfairness."

"Hence then—at all events in this country—scientific men were startled when Arago... published in 1838 the eloge of Watt, which he had read as far back as Dec., 1834, in which he charged Cavendish with deceit and plagiarism, inasmuch as he was said to have learned the composition of water, not by experiments of his own, but by obtaining sight of a letter from Watt to Priestley. The battle now fairly began..."

"At the time Cavendish made his study of compounds, chemists still had not been able to "determine what it /arsenic/ really is, or to what class of bodies it belongs." ...[A]rsenic behaves as a in some states, and like a salt in other states. ...[L]ike every metallic , arsenic [could be] changed into a metallic form... "regulus of arsenic"... [by combining] with "phlogiston." ...[L]ike salts, arsenic is soluble in water. ...[N]either ic nor ne, yet Macquer claimed, behaving as if it were an acid. ...In other ways ...arsenic differs from other... calces: it is volatile with a strong smell, it is fusible, it unites with metals and s—the difference that Macquer and Cavendish picked up on—it decomposes nitre when distilled with it. From the standpoint of affinities... arsenic is exceptional too."

"Neutral salts, Cavendish's starting point... were... composed of s and other substances, mostly s, that were without acidity. Not long before, all of the known neutral salts could be listed in a table of twelve... the possible combinations of the four known acidic salts and the three known alkaline salts. Just as Cavendish began to work... the tidy, managable table... was fast expanding. The empirical field of salts was recognized as highly undeveloped..."

"Cavendish procured Macquer's neutral salt using Macquer's method of distilling with nitre, producing copious red fumes... leaving... a cake of neutral arsenical salt. He then tried... dissolving arsenic in spirit of nitre, then adding pearl ashes... to obtain neutral arsenical salt. ...[His] discovery: what combined with the alkali ...was ...a new acid, "arsenical acid" ...[T]his new acid had "all the properties of an acid... unless perhaps it should fail in respect of taste which I have thought not proper to try." This research was the high point of Cavendish's researches on ."

"Between the Charybdis of inaccuracy and the Scylla of abstruseness, the course is narrow and the sea is rough."

"What parts of the interior or the atmosphere give rise to the various phenomena, or indeed, if these regions have any parts at all, are questions which we ask of the stars in vain."

"It is as though a star throws the whole secret history of its being into its spectrum, and we have only to learn how to read it aright in order to solve the most abstruse problems of the physical Universe."

"A science in its infancy is the least satisfactory, and, at the same time, the most profitable theme for a general description."

"A great idea invariably creates as many problems as it solves: that is a sign of its greatness."

"A ray of light, passing close to a heavy body, should, on Einstein's assumption, suffer a slight chance of direction, as if it were pulled towards the body. According to Newton's principles, there seems to be no reason why the light should be bent at all. It is possible, however, that light possesses the equivalent of weight in a material body, and, if so, the gravitational force should cause a bending similar to that predicted by the theory of relativity, but of only half the amount."

"The aim of the scientist is to express, in as simple a statement as possible, the principles underlying the order and arrangement of phenomena."

"The numerical side of the theory of relativity is derived from the failure of all attempts to detect the relative motion of matter and ether."

"It is the event that is the immediate entity of perception; Nature is the sum-total of events, and every instrument of thought that our minds employ can be traced back to its ultimate origin in events."

"Matter, space, and time ... according to the relativist, are types of relations between events."

"If we are to survive, we must not accept the official indoctrination of the purpose of nuclear 'power' stations, radiation health risks, the 'need' for further nuclear weapons and the reality of nuclear war."

"[Ryle] lived through an epic period of scientific history, starting his career in the turmoil of wartime electronic countermeasures, and turning eventually to a deep concern about the future of mankind in the age of nuclear power and warfare."

"The glorious years of discovery in radio astronomy in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge were dominated by the personality of Martin Ryle."

"[The steady-state theory] was a minority view, but [Hoyle] and a few like-minded theorists were able to keep the plate spinning for years. Another Cambridge luminary, Martin Ryle, finally brought it crashing down. An irascible, hardheaded experimenter, Ryle thought theorists like Hoyle were daffy. In a colloquium on sunspots, Mitton reports, Ryle became so incensed by Hoyle's speculations that he dashed to the blackboard and angrily erased the equations."

"We must put our energies into solving the difficult problems, in many disciplines, which are involved in renewable sources - on which both the developed and the developing countries must eventually depend."

"The benefits of medical research are real - but so are the potential horrors of genetic engineering and embryo manipulation. We devise heart transplants, but do little for the 15 million who die annually of malnutrition and related diseases. Our cleverness has grown prodigiously - but not our wisdom."

"We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe; that's a good estimate with well-defined error bars and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you."

"What seems certain is that Pythagoras developed the idea of mathematical logic... He realized that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths which were independent of opinion of prejudice and which were more absolute then any previous knowledge."

"Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste."

"… did you know that 60% of measurements and statistics start with a 1, 2 or 3? Distance to the sun, 150,000,000km, starts with a 1. Height of Everest, 29,000ft, starts with a 2. Density of barium, 3.59g/cm3, starts with a 3. You might think that I am (2008 Italian cherry production, 134,407 tonnes, starts with a 1), but if you scan the financial pages of this newspaper then you will see that most numbers do indeed start with a 1, 2 or 3. This eccentricity of the digits is dubbed , because it was made famous by , a physicist at the in New York. He, like the rest of us, had both previously assumed that the starting digit of numbers would be evenly spread among all the numbers from 1 to 9, so he was shocked by his own discovery."

"... I started thinking about gravitational theories and Mach's Principle and so on, I knew already then, very slightly, Hermann Bondi and Tommy Gold, and I talked to them a bit about these things, I remember I asked Bondi to tea one day and told him the thoughts I'd had and I said, "Are they rubbish? What should I do?" He said, "Why not go on thinking about them?" I think that was very good of him, because I'm quite sure in retrospect it was rubbish what I said, as I was very immature at that time ..."

"The reader has by now probably become accustomed to the reversals of fortune so common in astronomy."

"It has now become clear that the exploration of the Universe, as conducted by physicists, astronomers and cosmologists, is one of the greatest intellectual adventures of the mid-twentieth century."

"You know my favourite Dirac story: I go up to him once and I say, "Professor Dirac, I've just thought of a way of relating the formation of stars to cosmological things — not galaxies, stars — shall I tell you about it?" And he said, "No.""

"It is not surprising that it was the Greeks, with their profound understanding of geometrical principles, who were the first to devise methods of measuring the size of the earth and the distance to the sun and the moon. Indeed, their results were not superseded until the eighteenth century, when telescopes had been developed to the point where new methods could be introduced."

"You know the wild flowers suit your hair: Place hands full of the purple bloom Of loosestrife, glad of such soft doom, And tender-toned narcissus there"

"Never go to a public lavatory in London. I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him."

"Your father bears an iron reed Filled with a flame that makes us bleed; Your kindly mother loves to tear Feathers and skin to deck her hair."

"Come, take hands, you are not such As this will weary overmuch. Sit we down, and hear rehearse The marvels of the sweet-souled verse"

"[I]n the June, 1960 issue of... the ', there appeared a paper by... Roger Penrose with the esoteric title "A Approach to General Relativity." Although the paper was highly mathematical, it outlined a very elegant and streamlined technique for solving certain problems in general relativity. ...this new method made some computations almost easy."

"Although I'm regarded as a dangerous radical by particle physicists for proposing that there may be loss of quantum coherence, I'm definitely a conservative compared to Roger. I take the positivist viewpoint that a is just a and that it is meaningless to ask whether it corresponds to reality. All that one can ask is that its predictions should be in agreement with observation. I think Roger is a Platonist at heart but he must answer for himself."

"Reading about the lives of geniuses can be a powerful antidote against any envy we might feel for not being among their number. Almost invariably they turn out not only to have had the same flaws, trials and heartbreaks as the rest of us but to be deeply weird to boot. The Nobel Prize-winning British physicist Roger Penrose certainly fits the template."

"Whereas originally the hopes for string theory, and its descendants, were that some kind of uniqueness would be arrived at, whereby the theory would supply mathematical explanations for the measured numbers of experimental physics, the string theorists were driven to find refuge in the strong anthropic argument in an attempt to narrow down an absolutely vast number of alternatives. In my own view, this a very sad and unhelpful place for a theory to find itself."

"What the anthropic principle depends upon is the idea that whatever is the nature of the universe, or universe portion that we see about us, being subject to whatever dynamical laws govern its actions, this must be strongly favourable to our very existence."

"One is left with the uneasy feeling that even if supersymmetry is actually false, as a feature of nature, and that accordingly no supersymmetry partners are ever found by the LHC or by any later more powerful accelerator, then the conclusion that some supersymmetry proponents might come to would not be that supersymmetry is false for the actual particles of nature, but merely that the level of supersymmetry breaking must be greater even that the level reached at that moment, and that a new even more powerful machine would be required to observe it!"