"Whenever I came to him (Fritz Sauter) with a pure physics idea, he would invariably say, with slight sarcasm: "But Mr. Kroemer, you ought to be able to formulate this mathematically! " If I came to him with a math formulation, I would get, in a similar tone: "But Mr. Kroemer, that is just math, what is the physics?" After a few encounters of this kind, you got the idea: You had to be able to go back and forth with ease. Yet, in the last analysis, concepts took priority over formalism, the latter was simply an (indispensable) means to an end."
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Academics from the United StatesAcademics from GermanyNobel laureates in PhysicsPhysicists from GermanyPhysicists from the United States
Original Language: English
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in his Autobiography, Herbert Kroemer, The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Kroemer
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Herbert Kroemer
Herbert Kroemer (August 25, 1928 – March 8, 2024) was a German-American professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2000, along with Zhores I. Alferov, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics "for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics".
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