Nobel Laureates In Physics

"The reader may ask why in this book string theory and supersymmetry have not been discussed. ... The fact is that this book is about physics and this implies that the theoretical ideas discussed must be supported by experimental facts. Neither supersymmetry and string theory satisfy this criterion. They are figments of the theoretical mind."

"If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws — and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! — there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it!"

"... trying to solve a paradox will lead to new kinds of understanding. And I think that the problem of subjecting black holes to quantum mechanics is a fundamental paradox of the same nature, and the same depth, and the same importance as the paradox that Max Planck was studying at the beginning of the twentieth century."

"On your way towards becoming a bad theoretician, take your own immature theory, stop checking it for mistakes, don't listen to colleagues who do spot weaknesses, and start admiring your own infallible intelligence."

"The best colleagues are those who will think about your ideas, who will talk with you and offer insight, constructive criticism. No one needs to be crushed for having a new idea."

"If they can in their proposals write the word Nano, the chances for funding increase."

"I always look for colleagues who are smart, and who know a lot in many fields. The obvious advantage is that he or she may be able to solve the problem that has produced trouble in your work. Also smart and knowledgeable colleagues can save you time, and are interesting and inspiring!"

"We understand many things about particles and their interactions, but this and other mysteries make it very clear that we are nowhere close to a full understanding."

"For every good idea, expect to have five, ten, twenty wrong or useless ideas. You cannot avoid the bad ideas if you keep your imagination free. There is no spam filter for bad ideas."

"Great physics does not automatically imply complicated mathematics!"

"You may turn a bad idea into a good idea — don't kill the bad idea prematurely. A bad idea can evolve into a good idea."

"Deterministic underlying theories for QM are possible. They are still difficult to construct, but simple "toy models" are possible. These models are not good enough to replace today's existing quantum theories."

"The experimenter dealing with nature faces an outside and often hard world. Natures' curriculum cannot be changed."

"Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere."

"It is always a good plan for a speculative experimenter to have two experiments going, or at least one going and one being built."

"Common elements of creativity are originality and imagination. Creativity is intertwined with the freedom to design, to invent and to dream. In engineering and science a creative idea is useful only if it meets three conditions: the constraint of the natural laws, the constraint of cost, and the constraint of technical feasibility."

"Gerard is a Dutchman. The Dutch are the tallest people in Europe, but Gerard is short and solidly built, with a mustache and the look of a burgher. Like Feynman, 't Hooft has a strong competitive streak, but I am sure that I never got the better of him. Unlike Feynman, he is a product of old Europe — the last great European physicist, inheritor of the mantle of Einstein and Bohr. Although he is six years younger than I am, I was in awe of him in 1981, and rightfully so. In 1999 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work leading to the Standard Model of elementary particles."

"Imagination and obsession are the keys to getting a good idea. To help your imagination keep your eyes and ears open. Avoid the "not invented here prejudice"."

"In the beginning was mechanics."

"Quantum physics, which in contrast to the earlier theory, is characterized by the appearance of the elementary action quantum h and the designation of states in material systems by whole numbers, dates as theory only from the beginning of the twentieth century... However, some of its experimental roots extend far back into the nineteenth century. Of course, the measurements of the intensity of heat radiation which brought the change are a product of the last decade of that century. However, the photoelectric effect, and the wavelengths of the line and band spectra and also the dependence of the specific heats of certain substances on temperature had been known decades earlier. The older physics had hoped to arrive at an explanation of these findings; otherwise it is difficult to understand why Philipp von Jolly (1809-1884) told the inquiring young Planck that physics was essentially worked out and the pursuit of this science accordingly could hardly be very profitable. What appeared from time to time concerning line spectra could no longer stand up under rigid criticism when the discussion was based on the older ideas. On the other hand, quantum physics handled these problems more or less easily and in addition elucidated much of the newly acquired experimental observations."

"Though the churches, in general, abstained from interfering officially, the scientific activities of the physicists have always been influenced by their private religious views. The latter, of course, were not necessarily identical with the ecclesiastical doctrines, but the philosophical attitudes of the scientists were affected, at least to some extent, by the prevailing religious thought. Kepler, Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton freely acknowledged this influence; it played a part in the principle of least action in the eighteenth century. After this period, in which Kant's philosophy proclaimed the complete independence of scientific understanding and religious belief, not much more about it is found in physical writings. However, this by no means signifies that the investigational urge of later scientists was not intimately connected with their religiosity. The tenet that the scientific experience of truth in any sense is "theoria," i.e., a view of God, might be said sincerely about the best of them. The search for knowledge without regard to its applicability for use has been "an essential trait of man through the centuries, a sign of his higher origin.""

"We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on."

"The coming nanometer age can, therefore, also be called the age of interdisciplinarity."

"To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant."

"I lost all respect for angstroms."

"We had the freedom to make mistakes. That's something very important. Unfortunately, this freedom for scientists gets more and more lost. … Otherwise, you do the common things. You don't dare to do something beyond what everybody else thinks."

"Young people are not yet biased in their mind. They are not completely taken by their expert opinions. Expert opinions have a difficulty to go beyond of what they know. When you start in a new field, from the point of view of a scientist, you certainly are 20 years younger, because in the new field you're not yet biased and you look at certain things a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more open."

"You only have one life. Whatever crops up, crops up."

"The pretention that some of us are better than others, I don't think is a very good thing. And who is contributing what to our progress in science is not so obvious and many who don't get that Nobel Prize are better than people than some of us that do get the Nobel Prize. … I think we should not be interested in prizes, we should be interested in learning about nature."

"The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business."

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

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

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

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

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

"Never measure anything but frequency!"

"I would say that the global warming is basically a non-problem. Just leave it alone and it will take care of itself."

"For the last hundred years, the ocean has risen 20 cm — but for the previous hundred years the ocean also has risen 20 cm and for the last 300 years, the ocean has also risen 20 cm per 100 years. So there is no unusual rise in sea level. And to be sure you understand that I will repeat it. There is no unusual rise in sea level."

"Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church."

"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so — half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned."

"They can fiddle with the data. That is what NASA does."

"If you want to do good research, it's important not to know too much. This almost sounds contradictory but really if you know too much and you get an idea, you will sort of talk yourself out of trying it because you figure it won't work. But if you know just the right amount and you get enthusiastic about your project, you go ahead, you do it and if you're lucky things'll work out."

"How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and come up with a fraction of a degree?"

"When the ice age comes, the temperature falls 8 degrees. So maybe we should pollute more, to prevent that?"

"The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better."

"We don't know where breakthroughs will come from and there is no guarantee that they will come from a popular area which is currently drawing a lot of attention. I think the natural pattern is that something new, something which no one was paying attention to before appears when there is a bottleneck. It would be a serious mistake to nip things like this in the bud."

"You never know where a breakthrough might occur, so please pursue various possibilities for potential research. You may not see results as quickly as you wish, but always remember to respect your ideas when you research."

"There is no promised road leading to definite results. What's important is how to keep open as many options as possible."

"It’s the boundaries where the excitement is and where we will be in the future."

"My own beliefs are that the road to a scientific discovery is seldom direct, and that it does not necessarily require great expertise. In fact, I am convinced that often a newcomer to a field has a great advantage because he is ignorant and does not know all the complicated reasons why a particular experiment should not be attempted."