Physicists From The United States

"Is the earth affected by its cosmological setting in the universe? It is to be presumed that the solar system was molded at its birth by galactic conditions which in turn reflected the primordial chaos of the primitive galaxy. However, we are not concerned here with questions of this type, interesting though they are, but rather with a problem of even grander proportions: Is there an effect upon the earth, here and now, of the distribution of matter in the universe? As the universe expands, as distant matter moves away from us, are there effects upon the earth of this changing distribution of matter?"

"A diatomic molecule is a molecule with one atom too many."

"Anything will lase if you hit it hard enough."

"Dead is when the chemists take over the subject."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing twice, the first time quick and dirty and the second time the best way you can."

"To do successful research, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know one thing that isn't known."

"Never measure anything but frequency!"

"Hunting is doing business with animals."

"I shall here present the view that numbers, even whole numbers, are words, parts of speech, and that mathematics is their grammar. Numbers were therefore invented by people in the same sense that language, both written and spoken, was invented. Grammar is also an invention. Words and numbers have no existence separate from the people who use them. Knowledge of mathematics is transmitted from one generation to another, and it changes in the same slow way that language changes. Continuity is provided by the process of oral or written transmission."

"Most of us are unaware of our deep-seated faith in numbers."

"A good plan will therefore include alternative actions, the choice between them being left open until the passage of time indicates which is feasible and which is not."

"If we are to control our own future, it will be necessary, not only to obtain the cooperation of people, but to prepare comprehensive plans for that future."

"Each community has a curious and distorted image of itself which is always flattering."

"In order to arrive to a more realistic view of society, it must be recognized that there are individual differences that cannot be eradicated by the most rigid curriculum, and that various individuals will choose different educational curricula if allowed to do so."

"Well, if we read the Bible as a whole we would expect order in the world. Purpose would imply order, and what we actually find is order."

"Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals who love knowledge and the creation of it. Just as important to the integrity of science have been the unwritten rules of the game. These provide recognition and approbation for work which is imaginative and accurate, and apathy or criticism for the trivial or inaccurate... Thus, it is the communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of science..."

"In retrospect, the research organization which emerged from the decade following the Bell System’s breakup deployed a far richer set of capabilities than its predecessor. In particular, our work featured a growing software component, even as we strove to improve our hardware capabilities in areas such as light-wave and electronics. The marketplace upheaval brought forth by increased competition helped speed the pace of technological revolution, and forced change upon the research and development institutions of all industrialized nations, Bell Labs included. While change is rarely comfortable, I am happy to say that we not only survived but also grew more capable in the process — seeding much of the information revolution which now pervades the world in which we live. Except for two or three papers on interstellar isotopes, my tenure as Bell Labs’ Vice-President of Research brought my personal research in astrophysics to an end. In its place, I pursued my interest in the principles which underlie the creation and effective use of technology in our society, and eventually found time to write a book on the subject Ideas and Information, published by W.W. Norton in 1989. In essence, the book depicts computers as a wonderful tool for human beings but a dreadful role model for what we humans know as intelligence. In other words, “If you don’t want to be replaced by a machine, don’t try to act like one!”"

"Millimeter-wave spectral studies have proven to be a particularly fruitful area for radio astronomy, and are the subject of active and growing interest, involving a large number of scientists around the world. The most personally satisfying portion of this work for me was using molecular spectra to explore the isotopic composition of interstellar atoms — thereby tracing the nuclear processes that produced them. Most notably our 1973 discovery of DCN, the first deuterated molecular species found in interstellar space, enabled me to trace the distribution of deuterium in the galaxy. This work provided us with evidence for the cosmological origin of this unique element, which had earned the nickname “Arno’s white whale”. Of all the nuclear species found in nature, deuterium is the only one whose origin stems exclusively from the explosive origin of the Universe. Because deuterium’s cosmic abundance serves as the single most sensitive parameter in the prediction of cosmic background radiation, these measurements provided strong support for the “Big Bang” interpretation of our earlier discovery."

"After a painful but largely successful struggle with courses and qualifying exams, I began my thesis work under Professor Townes. I was given the task of building a maser amplifier in a radio-astronomy experiment of my choosing; the equipment-building went better than the observations. In 1961, with my PhD thesis complete, I went in search of a temporary job at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey. Their unique facilities made it an ideal place to finish the observations I had begun during my thesis work. “Why not take a permanent job? You can always quit,” was the advice of Rudi Kompfner, then Director of the Radio Research Laboratory. I took his advice, and remained a Bell Labs employee for the next thirty seven years. Since the large horn antenna I had planned to use for radio-astronomy was still engaged in the ECHO satellite project for which it was originally constructed, I looked for something interesting to do with a smaller fixed antenna. The project I hit upon was a search for line emission from the then still undetected interstellar OH molecule. While the first detection of this molecule was made by another group, I learned quite a bit from the experience."

"It was taken for granted that I would go to college, studying science, presumably chemistry, the only science we knew much about. “College” meant City College of New York, a municipally-supported institution then beginning its second century of moving the children of New York’s immigrant poor into the American middle class. I discovered physics in my freshman year and switched my “major” from chemical engineering to physics. Graduation, marriage and two years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, saw me applying to Columbia University in the Fall of 1956."

"I was born in Munich, Germany, in 1933. I spent the first six years of my life comfortably, as an adored child in a closely-knit middle-class family. Even when my family was rounded up for deportation to Poland it didn’t occur to me that anything could happen to us. All I remember is scrambling up and down three tiers of narrow beds attached to the walls of a very large room, and then taking a long train trip. After some days of back and forth on the train, we were returned to Munich. All the grown-ups were happy and relieved, but I began to realize that there were bad things that my parents couldn’t completely control, something to do with being Jewish. I learned that everything would be fine if we could only get to “America”."

"Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."

"The Bible talks of purposeful creation. What we have, however, is an amazing amount of order; and when we see order, in our experience it normally reflects purpose."

"A closed universe, one that explodes, expands, falls back on itself and explodes again, repeating the process over and over eternally, that would be a pointless universe. … But it seems to me that the data we have in hand right now clearly show that there is not nearly enough matter in the universe, not enough by a factor of three, for the universe to be able to fall back on itself ever again. My argument, is that the best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole."

"As for the Internet, I tend to have profound doubts about the value of this communication advance to science. I wonder if, in an era of the Internet, we can have somebody like Eugene Wigner. Eugene Wigner's genius manifested itself in his ability to concentrate for a long time on a single idea. If you are constantly beset by outside ideas, can you really get to the true heart of the matter? It's a very different way of doing science."

"The philosophy of science is concerned with how you decide if a scientific finding is correct or true. You have to establish criteria to determine if the finding or theory is valid. Validity is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of science, but the fundamental problem in the philosophy of scientific administration is the question of value. Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities."

"Then I went to the Cavendish and there I took Rutherford’s course in nuclear physics. He was a very dramatic lecturer and full of anecdotes. He made it come alive. So this was very impressive--also very phenomenological, everything he did; very simple derivations. I think that’s very important for the first learning and this is perhaps something students now miss. They get the theory of nuclear physics thrown at them; sometimes before they ever know there is a phenomenon they have the complete theory of it. The phenomena are not sufficiently emphasized, I think, in teaching today."

"Excessive bureaucracy is distracting, time-consuming, and destructive to creativity."

"We should willingly take risks in supporting new projects. The tendency is to play it safe when funding is low, but we need to remember that the greatest risks have the greatest payoffs."

"Young people should be given good support and freedom in their research. They are the greatest source of scientific creativity because they are not as committed to existing scientific orthodoxy, and they have the energy and enthusiasm to push new ideas."

"Creativity is the basis of all innovation, and although it is doubtful that it can be taught, creativity should be nurtured in those who have it."

"Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation."

"There are very few things that can be proved rigorously in condensed matter physics."

"Remember that no piece of honestly conducted research is ever wasted, even if it seems so at the time. Put it away in a drawer, and ten, twenty or thirty years down the road, it will come back and help you in ways you never anticipated."

"The people who do make big discoveries are the ones who somehow manage to free themselves from conventional ways of thinking and to see the subject from a new perspective."

"It has been reported that when Michelson was asked towards the end of his life, why he had devoted such a large fraction of his time, to the measurement of the velocity of light, he replied "it was so much fun"."

"It is... striking that the Michelson laboratory was, properly speaking, cosmic. There, the most artificial physics imaginable was referred to the space of the world. The decimal which they wished to reveal by means of the interferometer, the decimal which is of the order of three-fourths of the wavelength of a vibration of light, was related to the orbital speed of the earth, a speed of the order of eighteen miles per second. The precision of such a question... this attempt to experience the immobility of space in its cosmic significance, ought to set the metaphysicians thinking who study the place of man in the world; if only these metaphysicians would give their attention to the lengthy discursive processes which lead science to build new intuitions."

"Relativity was born of an epistemological shock; it was born of the "failure" of the Michelson experiment. ...Is so little required to "shake" the universe of spatiality? Can a single experiment... annihilate... two or three centuries of rational thought? Yes, a single decimal sufficed, as our poet Henri de Regnier would say, to "make all nature sing." ...The Michelson experiment, at first so particular in character, will form the basis of the most far-reaching generalization."

"It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration."

"Before entering into these details, however, it may be well to reply to the very natural question: What would be the use of such extreme refinement in the science of measurement? Very briefly and in general terms the answer would be that in this direction the greater part of all future discovery must lie. The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions.As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second—an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet by observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that "our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." It follows that every means which facilitates accuracy in measurement is a possible factor in a future discovery, and this will, I trust, be a sufficient excuse for bringing to your notice the various methods and results which form the subject matter of these lectures."

"Now, the velocity of wave propagation can be seen, without the aid of any mathematical analysis, to depend on the elasticity of the medium and its density; for we can see that if a medium is highly elastic the disturbance would be propagated at a great speed."

"It is clear to me that under the right conditions, future technologies will be created that we cannot even imagine."

"While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."

"Cosmic rays"

"The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) rose to prominence when Robert A. Millikan was called to Pasadena in 1921 as new university president. Millikan was known for his far-reaching ambitions both as a physicist and as a science manager. He put CalTech on the map as a top university by inviting the world's most renowned scientists for guest lectures and by hiring internationally distinguished scientists to new chairs. With theoretical physicist Paul Epstein, a pupil of Sommerfeld's, Millikan brought modern atomic physics to CalTech in the early 1920s, and with Kármán, he pursued the same strategy a few years later in order to lure the best available aerodynamicist from Europe to Pasadena."

"In 1832 the English astronomer Airy, in making a report to the British Association on the state of astronomical science throughout the world, remarked that he was unable to say anything about America astronomy because, so far as he knew, no public observatory existed in the United States. It was in the 1840's that the Cincinnati Observatory, the Naval Observatory in Washington, and the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were founded—the three pioneer institutions in a development that has continued with increasing acceleration ever since."

"Since the origin of the "penetrating rays" was still uncertain, Dr. Russell Otis and myself in the summer of 1923 went to the top of Pike's Peak for the sake of making absorption experiments upon these radiation at the highest altitude to which we could carry large quantities of absorbing materials. For if the rays were not of cosmic origin they did not need to be more penetrating than are the gamma rays from radioactive materials, while if they were of cosmic origin the sounding balloon experiments of Bowen and myself had shown that they must be very much harder (more penetrating) than anybody had thus far assumed. What was needed was absorption experiments to determine just what sort of rays they actually were."

"Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment."

"Eppie's memory is like sticky flypaper."

"To have a good memory the first thing you have to do is to trust your memory."