Nobel Laureates In Physics

"This example illustrates the differences in the effects which may be produced by research in pure or applied science. A research on the lines of applied science would doubtless have led to improvement and development of the older methods—the research in pure science has given us an entirely new and much more powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads to reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and revolutions, whether political or industrial, are exceedingly profitable things if you are on the winning side."

"The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!"

"Cathode Rays... he adheres to the hypothesis that the rays are due to the violent projection of the negatively charged particles from the cathode. In another abstract from presumably the same lecture, he states that in the cathode discharge the matter is in something beyond the ordinary state and that the carriers of the discharge in a cathode ray are not atoms but something very much smaller; his conclusions are that the particles carrying the charge must be in a much more finely divided state than the ordinary molecule and possibly may be the primordial element; the numerical ration of the mass of the particle to the charge carried is about 1,100 times less than that deduced electrolytically for the hydrogen ion, showing that either the charge must be very great or the particle very small, and it is the latter which he thinks is the case."

"His reluctance to pay for elaborate or expensive equipment, perhaps the result of an impoverished childhood, had established the legendary "sealing wax-and-string" tradition of the Cavendish, where everyday materials were ingeniously used to make and patch up experimental equipment, with sealing wax proving particularly useful for vacuum seals."

"J. J. Thomson was about to make the most significant find of the late nineteenth century... Thomson had been investigating the nature of cathode rays. He was convinced that they were some kind of electrified particles and, to prove his theory, began testing their behavior in electric or magnetic fields. By measuring both the extent to which such fields deflected them and their electric charge, he discovered that cathode rays consisted of very small negatively charged particles whose mass was about eighteen hundred times smaller than the lightest known substance—the hydrogen atom. ...He initially named these tiny carriers of electricity "corpuscles." Later they would become known as "electrons." The corpuscles were, in fact, the first subatomic particles to be found..."

"Thomson's work suggested an alternative version—the instability of matter—to that of the indivisible atom. It was revolutionary stuff."

"Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, published in 1883, had won him enough acclaim at the age of twenty-seven that he was named director of the [Cavendish] laboratory the next year."

"Thomson and then his young men demolished a recurrent scientific myth—one that had surfaced again in the 1870's: that there was nothing left to be discovered, nothing new under the sun. Part of the immutable wisdom of the day, endorsed and believed long before the greatest of scientists, Isaac Newton, was a kind of billiard ball theory of the atom, which went back to the ancient Greeks. The word itself is from the Greek atomos, meaning "inidivisible.""

"Thomson's lecture drew from Fitz Gerald the suggestion that "we are dealing with free electrons in these cathode rays"—a remark the point of which will become more evident when we come to consider the direction in which the Maxwellian theory was being developed at this time."

"Where in the Schrödinger equation do you put the joy of being alive?"

"A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances. He could be blunt when necessary, but was never pompous. A mind of von Neumann's inexorable logic had to understand and accept much that most of us do not want to accept and do not even wish to understand. This fact colored many of von Neumann's moral judgments. "It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature." Only scientific intellectual dishonesty and misappropriation of scientific results could rouse his indignation and ire — but these did — and did almost equally whether he himself, or someone else, was wronged."

"A possible explanation of the physicist's use of mathematics to formulate his laws of nature is that he is a somewhat irresponsible person. As a result, when he finds a connection between two quantities which resembles a connection well-known from mathematics, he will jump at the conclusion that the connection is that discussed in mathematics simply because he does not know of any other similar connection."

"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."

"In science, it is not speed that is the most important. It is the dedication, the commitment, the interest and the will to know something and to understand it — these are the things that come first."

"The main virtue of the physics-chemistry-biology sequence is the hierarchical nature of the sciences. Physics comes first because it serves as a powerul prerequisite for chemistry and because it can more clearly illustrate the nature of the scientific process."

"Leon is a giant in our field in particle physics. ... he was an all-around approachable person. ... he had an open-door policy. ..."

"That's the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat, you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it's fear. Is it right? And it's incredible humor. 'How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid, not to see this?'"

"A time traveler from the year 1899 would be continually amazed by our advanced technology—our cars and airplanes, our skyscraper cities, our TV, radio, computers, and communication abilities. Probably the traveler would be most shaken by our science, from astronomy to zoology. The only place in which this visitor would be comfortably at home is in most of our high schools."

"Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries."

"... I said I am doing experiments on pions. Einstein said, "Pions! Pions! We don't understand the electron. Why do you bother with pions? ...""

"Science is not about status quo. It’s about revolution."

"We are honored for research which is today referred to as the "Two Neutrino Experiment". How does one make this research comprehensible to ordinary people? In fact "The Two Neutrinos" sounds like an Italian dance team. How can we have our colleagues in chemistry, medicine, and especially in literature share with us, not the cleverness of our research, but the beauty of the intellectual edifice, of which our experiment is but one brick? This is a dilemma and an anguish for all scientists because the public understanding of science is no longer a luxury of cultural engagement, but it is an essential requirement for survival in our increasingly technological age: In this context, I believe this Nobel Ceremony with its awesome tradition and pomp has as one of its most important benefits; the public attention it draws to science and its practitioners."

"Are we making more mistakes now? I don't think so. Science is a high-risk activity. And when you do science—this is very important incidentally for the general public, and for policy makers—if you are not wasting some of your money, you are not doing good science. It's a funny way to say this. You've got to back high-risk opportunities. And high-risk opportunities means some fraction of them are going to fail. And I think in any science funding scenario, you've got to say, 10, 20, maybe even 30% of your funds are going to be invested in failures."

"I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn't doing anything else and I didn't want to look dumb, so I thought I'd pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph.D. before I realized I was pretty good."

"It is, indeed an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature.… What is intelligible is also beautiful."

"All the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in ."

"The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time. And since the general theory of Relativity provides only a single unique family of solutions for their descriptions, they are the simplest objects as well."

"I was very fortunate to know the great astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar during his last years. Chandra, as we called him, was the first to discover that general relativity implied that stars above a certain mass would collapse into what we now call a black hole. Much later, he wrote a beautiful book describing the different solutions of the equations of general relativity that describe black holes. As I got to know him, Chandra shocked me by speaking of a deep anger toward Einstein. Chandra was upset that Einstein, after inventing general relativity, had abandoned this masterpiece, leaving it to others to struggle through it."

"Pakistan might have put Salam’s face on a stamp but would not grant him his freedom of religion or [civil] rights, not even in death."

"Salam, as an observant religious Ahmadi Muslim, was aware of the ambiguity of his community's position. He responded to his expulsion by spending even more time in his pieties. But his enemies were relentless, and when he went to Pakistan after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, he was barred from entering the premises of any university. For Salam his sorrows did not end with his excommunication or death. In Pakistan he is a non-person and his name is not mentioned in textbooks. The popular press has concocted wild conspiracies of nuclear espionage against him."

"By generalization of methods developed by Kamefuchi, O'Raifeartaigh, and Salam, conditions for renormalizability of general gauge theories of massive vector mesons are derived. ... It is shown that all theories based on simple Lie groups (with the one exception of the neutral vector meson theory in interaction with a conserved current) are unrenormalizable."

"In the Holy Book of Islam, Allah says: "Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure. Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary." This in effect is, the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze."

"The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart."

"Salam's work was based on an imaginative synthesis of mathematical structures and in this style he followed his mentor Paul Dirac. He was also interested in mysticism and he took his religion of Ahmadi Islam very seriously. He was intrigued by ancient Indian ideas. In one conversation with me, he brought up the question of the age of the universe given in the Purāṇas. He wanted to understand, if at all that was possible, how the present cycle in Purāṇic cosmology is about the same number as the estimate of the time of the Big Bang. It is remarkable that he sought to bring opposites together in his mind, but this was at a high cost. He lived in two worlds and he wished to be faithful to both. He had simultaneous loyalties to Pakistan and his physics; to the traditions of his Rajput ancestry and his religion; and to his two wives, one Punjabi and the other English."

"Motion at low Reynolds number is very majestic, slow, and regular."

"It is an old story in physics that higher resolving power leads to new effects. We remember that the magnetic moment of the nucleus was itself discovered through the hyperfine structure of lines in the visible spectrum. The nuclear resonance line in a liquid or gas can be remarkably narrow, as you have already seen. As soon as the reason for this was recognized, it became clear that the only practical limit on resolution was the inhomogeneity of the magnetic field applied to the specimen."

"I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep — great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth's magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery."

"John Bardeen was an avid golfer and a good one. Whenever possible, he sought out golf courses during research or consulting trips. According to the stories, he was as proud of hitting a "hole in one" as he was to win a second Nobel Prize."

"On the morning of 1 November 1956 the US physicist John Bardeen dropped the frying-pan of eggs that he was cooking for breakfast, scattering its contents on the kitchen floor. He had just heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics along with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for their invention of the transistor. That evening Bardeen was startled again, this time by a parade of his colleagues from the University of Illinois marching to the door of his home bearing champagne and singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"."

"... I can't work well under the conditions at Bell Labs. Walter and I are looking at a few questions relating to point-contact transistors, but Shockley keeps all the interesting problems for himself."

"Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved. Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone."

"The way in which the convergent mathematical schemes did not fulfill the requirements of relativity and quantum theory was... interesting. ...[O]ne scheme ...interpreted in terms of actual events in space and time, led to a...time reversal... The physicists are convinced... that the processes... do not occur in nature... if... separated by measurable distance in space and time. ...If we assume that the laws of nature do contain a third universal constant... of the order of 10-13 cm, then... our usual concepts... apply only to regions in space and time that are large compared to the universal constant. We should... be prepared for phenomena of a qualitatively new character when we... approach regions... smaller than the nuclear radii. The phenomenon of time reversal... might therefore belong to these smallest regions."

"J. Robert Oppenheimer: You're talking about turning theory into a practical weapons system faster than the Nazis. Leslie Groves: Who have a twelve month head start. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Eighteen. Leslie Groves: How could you possibly know that? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Our fast neutron research took six months. The man they've undoubtedly put in charge will have made that leap instantly. Leslie Groves: Who do you think they put in charge? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Werner Heisenberg. He has the most intuitive understanding of atomic structure I've ever seen. Leslie Groves: You know his work? J. Robert Oppenheimer: I know him. Just like I know Walter Bothe, von Weizsäcker, Diebner... In a straight race, the Germans win. We've got one hope. Leslie Groves: Which is? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Antisemitism. Leslie Groves: What? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Hitler called quantum physics "Jewish science", said it right to Einstein's face. Our one hope is that Hitler is so, so blinded by hate that he's denied Heisenberg proper resources, because it'll take vast resources."

"From 1946 onward, as Germany's leading physicist, he had two disappointments. His efforts to bring scientists into government failed, and his scientific work, offering suggestions for a new unified field theory, was not generally accepted."

"In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."

"Heisenberg in cattedra / spiegava il Principio di indeterminazione / a una platea di eletti. / In un angolo Fermi e Dirac / si guardarono un attimo sbigottiti / poi si scambiarono brevi formule / scritte sui palmi delle mani"

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home."

"In 1929, Heisenberg spent some time in India as the guest of the celebrated Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, with whom he had long conversations about science and Indian philosophy. This introduction to Indian thought brought Heisenberg great comfort, he told me. He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of the Indian spiritual traditions. “After these conversations with Tagore,” he said, “some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.”"

"When he arrived he looked like a simple peasant boy, with short, fair hair, clear bright eyes and a charming expression. He took his duties as an assistant more seriously than Pauli and was a great help to me. His incredible quickness and acuteness of apprehension has always enabled him to do a colossal amount of work without much effort; he finished his hydrodynamic thesis, worked on atomic problems partly alone, partly in collaboration with me, and helped me to direct my research students."

"Heisenberg's name will always be associated with his theory of quantum mechanics, published in 1925, when he was only 23 years old. For this theory and the applications of it which resulted especially in the discovery of allotropic forms of hydrogen, Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932. His new theory was based only on what can be observed, that is to say, on the radiation emitted by the atom. We cannot, he said, always assign to an electron a position in space at a given time, nor follow it in its orbit, so that we cannot assume that the planetary orbits postulated by Niels Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities, such as position, velocity, etc. should be represented, not by ordinary numbers, but by abstract mathematical structures called "matrices" and he formulated his new theory in terms of matrix equations."