Fellows Of The Royal Society

"In the year 1775, the Paris Academy found it necessary to protect its officials against the waste of time and energy involved in examining the efforts of circle squarers. It passed a resolution... that no more solutions were to be examined of the problem of the duplication of the cube, the trisection of the angle, the quadrature of the circle, and the same resolution should apply to machines for exhibiting perpetual motion. an account... drawn up by Condorcet... is appended. It is interesting to remark that the strength of the conviction of Mathematicians that the solution of the problem is impossible, more than a century before an irrefutable proof of the correctness of that conviction was discovered."

"If the question be raised, why such an apparently special problem as the quadrature of the circle, is deserving of the sustained interest which has attained to it, and which it still possesses, the answer is only to be found in a scrutiny of the history of the problem, and especially in the closeness of the connection of that history with the general history of Mathematical Science."

"Success, even in a comparatively limited field, is some compensation for failure in a wider field of endeavour."

"The opinion appears to be gaining ground that this very general conception of functionality, born on mathematical ground, is destined to supersede the narrower notion of causation, traditional in connection with the natural sciences. As an abstract formulation of the idea of determination in its most general sense, the notion of functionality includes and transcends the more special notion of causation as a one-sided determination of future phenomena by means of present conditions; it can be used to express the fact of the subsumption under a general law of past, present, and future alike, in a sequence of phenomena. From this point of view the remark of Huxley that Mathematics "knows nothing of causation" could only be taken to express the whole truth, if by the term "causation" is understood "efficient causation." The latter notion has, however, in recent times been to an increasing extent regarded as just as irrelevant in the natural sciences as it is in Mathematics; the idea of thorough-going determinancy, in accordance with formal law, being thought to be alone significant in either domain."

"The actual evolution of mathematical theories proceeds by a process of induction strictly analogous to the method of induction employed in building up the physical sciences; observation, comparison, classification, trial, and generalisation are essential in both cases. Not only are special results, obtained independently of one another, frequently seen to be really included in some generalisation, but branches of the subject which have been developed quite independently of one another are sometimes found to have connections which enable them to be synthesised in one single body of doctrine. The essential nature of mathematical thought manifests itself in the discernment of fundamental identity in the mathematical aspects of what are superficially very different domains. A striking example of this species of immanent identity of mathematical form was exhibited by the discovery of that distinguished mathematician . . . Major MacMahon, that all possible Latin squares are capable of enumeration by the consideration of certain differential operators. Here we have a case in which an enumeration, which appears to be not amenable to direct treatment, can actually be carried out in a simple manner when the underlying identity of the operation is recognised with that involved in certain operations due to differential operators, the calculus of which belongs superficially to a wholly different region of thought from that relating to Latin squares."

"Who has studied the works of such men as Euler, Lagrange, Cauchy, Riemann, , and Weierstrass, can doubt that a great mathematician is a great artist? The faculties possessed by such men, varying greatly in kind and degree with the individual, are analogous with those requisite for constructive art. Not every mathematician possesses in a specially high degree that critical faculty which finds its employment in the perfection of form, in conformity with the ideal of logical completeness; but every great mathematician possesses the rarer faculty of constructive imagination."

"Much of the skill of the true mathematical physicist and of the mathematical astronomer consists in the power of adapting methods and results carried out on an exact mathematical basis to obtain approximations sufficient for the purposes of physical measurements. It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of Mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in Physics, Engineering Science, and Astronomy, and no doubt it would be possible to develop, to some extent at least, a species of Mathematics on these lines. Such a system would, however, involve an intolerable awkwardness and prolixity in the statements of results, especially in view of the fact that the degree of approximation necessary for various purposes is very different, and thus that unassigned grades of approximation would have to be provided for. Moreover, the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration, the ideals of exactitude and logical rigour, as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form. The history of the actual movements of mathematical thought through the centuries shows that these ideals are the very life-blood of the science, and warrants the conclusion that a constant striving toward their attainment is an absolutely essential condition of vigorous growth. These ideals have their roots in irresistible impulses and deep-seated needs of the human mind, manifested in its efforts to introduce intelligibility in certain great domains of the world of thought."

"I have said that mathematics is the oldest of the sciences; a glance at its more recent history will show that it has the energy of perpetual youth. The output of contributions to the advance of the science during the last century and more has been so enormous that it is difficult to say whether pride in the greatness of achievement in this subject, or despair at his inability to cope with the multiplicity of its detailed developments, should be the dominant feeling of the mathematician. Few people outside of the small circle of mathematical specialists have any idea of the vast growth of mathematical literature. The Royal Society Catalogue contains a list of nearly thirty-nine thousand papers on subjects of Pure Mathematics alone, which have appeared in seven hundred serials during the nineteenth century. This represents only a portion of the total output, the very large number of treatises, dissertations, and monographs published during the century being omitted."

"A great department of thought must have its own inner life, however transcendent may be the importance of its relations to the outside. No department of science, least of all one requiring so high a degree of mental concentration as Mathematics, can be developed entirely, or even mainly, with a view to applications outside its own range. The increased complexity and specialisation of all branches of knowledge makes it true in the present, however it may have been in former times, that important advances in such a department as Mathematics can be expected only from men who are interested in the subject for its own sake, and who, whilst keeping an open mind for suggestions from outside, allow their thought to range freely in those lines of advance which are indicated by the present state of their subject, untrammelled by any preoccupation as to applications to other departments of science. Even with a view to applications, if Mathematics is to be adequately equipped for the purpose of coping with the intricate problems which will be presented to it in the future by Physics, Chemistry and other branches of physical science, many of these problems probably of a character which we cannot at present forecast, it is essential that Mathematics should be allowed to develop freely on its own lines."

"Perhaps the least inadequate description of the general scope of modern Pure Mathematics—I will not call it a definition—would be to say that it deals with form, in a very general sense of the term; this would include algebraic form, functional relationship, the relations of order in any ordered set of entities such as numbers, and the analysis of the peculiarities of form of groups of operations."

"The Higgs is a very special type of particle - one we've never seen before. It has strange properties that we need to understand. This award was a complete surprise to me. It's really quite humbling and of course I'm delighted to receive it. I'm over the moon to be frank."

"Ld. Mulgrave told me in the morning that nothing was fixed about the Foreign office, and that Ld. Liverpool was too good a War Secretary to be spared there."

"It has seldom been sufficiently considered that in the adoption of those repressive measures which have been singled out for special abuse by the hostile critics of Lord Liverpool, Government was face to face with seditions and insurrectionary plots which culminated in a scheme for the assassination of the whole Cabinet. I see little or no justification for the various Arms Bills and Crimes Bills, and other precautionary measures which have been demanded for Ireland, which did not equally exist for the Six Acts. Governments are answerable for the preservation of peace and the security of life and property; and I doubt whether impartial men, after the experience of the last ten years, would be disposed to judge as harshly of these measures as was the fashion forty years ago, when public danger of this kind had come to seem almost like a dream."

"Lord Liverpool was an essentially fair-minded man, of great common-sense and great business capacity. He had not the genius which discerns from afar the signs of the times and treats present evils by the light of them; but he did what more brilliant men might have failed to do. He held together, for ten or twelve years, a Cabinet composed of very discordant materials, and was thus enabled to secure for his Government the support of both the old Conservative Tories and the younger advocates of Reform, who began to grow impatient of abuses. Without some such combination it is doubtful how far the country could have been governed at all during the critical period which followed the conclusion of the war. His high character, tact, moderation, and perfect disinterestedness secured for us a strong Government at the time when it was most wanted, and this, at all events, is a claim upon our gratitude which is never likely to be disputed."

"Both in 1806 and in 1809 he might have been Prime Minister had he chosen. But he recoiled from the first place, nor did he finally accept it till he saw that without him the Tory Party must be broken up, and the Whigs admitted in a body. Thus, he was not a man either to originate a great policy, to make personal enemies, or to be mixed up in political intrigues and back-stairs conspiracies. His career, accordingly, was deficient in all those elements which excite wonder and curiosity. No "revelations," no scandals, no racy anecdotes were to be expected from his private papers. There were no aspersions on his character which his family might have been eager to refute; no passages in his career which might seem to require vindication. Thus, many of the ordinary motives to which he publication of political biographies and the private papers of deceased statesmen may reasonably be attributed, were in his case wanting. And the literary warfare which usually follows such productions, and keeps alive the memory of men not above mediocrity, has not yet been kindled by the quiet virtues of Lord Liverpool."

"Lord Liverpool, however, is much more entitled to the gratitude and admiration of posterity than some statesmen who have enjoyed much more of it. He was one of that class of Ministers whom we should be very glad to see more numerous: patient, prudent, and patriotic; careless of his own fame, so that those measures were pursued which he considered for the public good; shunning rather than courting popular applause; and by his clear common sense, his unselfishness, and his equanimity, solving problems and surmounting difficulties which more brilliant men are wont either to create or to exasperate."

"History has hardly done justice to Liverpool's solid though not shining talents. That he was for nearly fifteen years head of an administration which concluded successfully the French war, carried the country through the perils which followed upon the peace of 1815, and brought it to the eve of the great reform period, and that during all that time his ministry, even when it consisted of two hostile and irreconcilable parties, was rarely in danger from its opponents, is proof conclusive that, although neither an impressive orator nor a great statesman, he had consummate tact, an infallible instinct for the practical solution of difficulties, unfailing temper, and eminent talents as a man of business and a public official."

"Notwithstanding, however, all this successful mystification, the Arch-Mediocrity who presided, rather than ruled, over this Cabinet of Mediocrities, became hourly more conscious that the inevitable transition from fulfilling the duties of an administration to performing the functions of a government could not be conducted without talents and knowledge. The Arch-Mediocrity had himself some glimmering traditions of political science. He was sprung from a laborious stock, had received some training, and though not a statesman, might be classed among those whom the Lord Keeper Williams used to call "statemongers." In a subordinate position his meagre diligence and his frigid method might not have been without value; but the qualities that he possessed were misplaced; nor can any character be conceived less invested with the happy properties of a leader. In the conduct of public affairs, his disposition was exactly the reverse to that which is the characteristic of great men. He was peremptory in little questions, and great ones he left open."

"Lord Liverpool was a very timid man: never sufficiently regarded—he carried the country through the most formidable war in which it was ever engaged. No use in having your general if Liverpool had not raised taxes."

"I cannot in a letter enter into all the particulars, but be assured the Government hangs by a thread. The Catholic question in its present state, combined with other circumstances, will, I have little doubt, lead to its dissolution in the course of this session."

"How, for instance, could the Protestant succession be maintained without a Protestant parliament? Such were his reasons for resisting the higher claims of the Catholics; but, with the same sentiments be would give his concurrence to the present measure. He apprehended from it none of the dangers which he had alluded to in the former case. Nay, he even believed, that the granting of such privileges to the Catholics of England, would strengthen the Protestant establishment, as a cause of discontent would thus be removed—as a reproach perpetually thrown in their teeth would be taken away—and as, by conceding these little things, they acquired strength to resist greater encroachments."

"He thought that, in order to maintain the Protestant ascendancy, it was necessary to have a Protestant parliament, a Protestant council, and Protestant judges."

"He felt all the importance of the measure that was now proposed: but he would not allow any imputations that might be insinuated to preclude him from discharging what he conscientiously believed to be his duty. His only object was, to support the throne, to support the constitution and to protect the peace, the happiness, and the confidence of every private man in the kingdom; his only view was, to preserve our morals, our religion, our establishments, and to secure to every man the tranquil enjoyment of his fireside. He asked of parliament to entrust the Prince Regent's ministers with that power for a short time—a most odious one, he agreed—and one which ought not to be confided to any man, or to any set of men, except in cases of the last necessity, except in such cases as, he apprehended, now justified him in calling for it."

"On the present occasion, they had the fullest proof (if they believed the report) of a treasonable conspiracy in the metropolis, to overturn, by a general insurrection, the laws, the government, and the constitution of the kingdom. It was also, a matter of perfect notoriety, that the same system was spread over a great part of the country. There was a double engine at work; the operation of the one, was evidently aiming at what every person must agree would overthrow the constitution; the operation of the other (he alluded to the Spenceans) was calculated to produce a complete convulsion in the elements which composed the system of social life."

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a discovery machine. We are actually looking to make discoveries. So, I think that’s the name of the game. As the data come in, the emphasis will be on the high statistical significance of the statements that we make at the end of the programme – we are half way through the LHC programme today and so [there is] another 10-15 years to go. The name of the game is actually to retrieve all the physics that is at this special energy scale of the LHC. There is some magic, I think, about this energy scale."

"We have a design [special characteristics of the detector] which is entirely based on a single magnet, a high field solenoid. The first thing one actually does in the design of the experiment is actually to figure out the magnetic field configuration for the measurement of muons. That then determines the rest of the design. The detector is built such that [see diagram] the first layer is within a tracker, which is all silicon."

"Where a government was established, it must proceed upon one of two principles; either to frame it in concert with permanent and immutable laws, or in connexion with laws that might be altered and modified according to particular exigencies? The former system, he apprehended, would not be very conducive to the happiness of mankind; on the other hand, if as much liberty were granted to the subject as could be conceded consistently with the safety of the state; there must be a power somewhere competent to the temporary suspension of that liberty, when such a measure becomes necessary for the protection of it ultimately."

"To conclude: we wish that the King of France would hang or shoot Buonaparte, as the best termination of the business; but if this is impracticable, and the allies are desirous that we should have the custody of him, it is not unreasonable that we should be allowed to judge of the means by which that custody can be be made effectual."

"No, youth is not the age of pleasure; we then expect too much, and are therefore exposed to daily disappointments and mortification. When we are a little older, and have brought down our wishes to our experience, then we become calm and begin to enjoy ourselves."

"France is your natural enemy; she is more so as a republic than as a monarchy. We know less at what point a nation will stop than a king."

"He was involved in the development of the CMS detector concept from the earliest days and has been influential in many areas of the detector design. The innovative concepts in CMS are likely to influence the next generation of high-energy physics experiments. He proposed the idea of discovering the elusive Higgs boson via its decay into two photons, which is central to the concept of the high resolution lead-tungstate crystal calorimeter, one of the major components of the CMS design."

"Professor Virdee is one of the UK's most distinguished physicists and, as one of the creators of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Experiment he has made outstanding contributions to science. The CMS experiment, at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Geneva, has delivered seminal results in particle physics, including the groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs Boson, or the God particle, a particle that gives mass to other particles. Beyond his innovative work in particle physics, he is also a great campaigner for science, and promoter of science and education in Africa and India"

"He developed new technologies within the detector that ultimately allowed it to find the Higgs - the mechanism which explains how sub-atomic particles came to have substance, or mass."

"Tejinder set about building a detector within the Large Hadron Collider that's capable of taking forty million phenomenally detailed images every second. Finding the Higgs will validate everything physicists think they know about the very nature of the universe: not finding it, will force them back to the drawing board."

"CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee has done search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle"."

"An Indian-origin physicist, best known for his work on the Large Hadron Collider experiment, has been accorded an honorary knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements in science."

"The good thing about Higgs is that depending on the mass it actually manifests itself inside the detector in completely different ways. And many different ways depending on the mass, and we have to cover all the different ways and, in fact, when you have done you find that detector can do anything that the nature has in store for us. Anything."

"Although it is not, abstractedly speaking, of importance to know who first made a most valuable experiment, or to what individual the community is indebted for the invention of the most useful machine, yet the sense of mankind has in this, as in several other things, been in direct opposition to frigid reasoning; and we are pleased with a recollection of benefits, and with rendering honour to the memory of those who bestowed them. Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away like hewers of wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise would be deprived of their most coveted distinction, and after-times would lose incentives to that emulation which urges us to cherish and practise what has been worthy of commendation or imitation in our forefathers; and to make their works, which may have served for a light and been useful to the age in which they lived, a guide and a spur to ourselves"

"What! the girl I adore by another embraced? What! the balm of her breath shall another man taste? What! pressed in the dance by another's man's knee? What! panting recline on another than me? Sir, she's yours; you have pressed from the grape its fine blue, From the rosebud you've shaken the tremulous dew; What you've touched you may take. Pretty waltzer—adieu!"

"Since the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence, it is worth observing that, rightly considered, the probability should surely be the other way. For the adaptations relate to every variety of exigency. To supply themselves with food, to find it, to seize and digest it, to protect themselves from predatory enemies whether by offence or defence, to counter-balance the changes of temperature, or pressure, to provide for mechanical strains, to obtain immunity from poison and from invading organisms, to bring the sexual elements into contact, to ensure the distribution of the type; all these and many more are accomplished by organisms in a thousand most diverse and alternative methods. Those are the things that are hard to imagine as produced by any concatenation of natural events; but the suggestions that organisms had had from the beginning innate in them a power of modifying themselves, their organs and their instincts so as to meet these multifarious requirements does not materially differ from the more overt appeals to supernatural intervention. The conception, originally introduced by Hering and independently by S. Butler, that adaptation is a consequence or product of accumulated memory was of late revived by Semon and has been received with some approval, especially by F. Darwin. I see nothing fantastic in the notion that memory may be unconsciously preserved with the same continuity that the protoplasmic basis of life possesses. That idea, though purely speculative and, as yet, incapable of proof or disproof contains nothing which our experience of matter or of life at all refutes. On the contrary, we probably do well to retain the suggestion as a clue that may some day be of service. But if adaptation is to be the product of these accumulated experiences, they must in some way be translated into terms of physiological and structural change, a process frankly inconceivable."

"More than one hundred years ago, William Bateson suggested that studying the regulation and timing of development was the key to understanding evolutionary change. He was right."

"Memory is a mystery as deep as any that even psychology can propound. [Natural] Philosophers might perhaps encourage themselves to attack the problem of the nature of memory by reflecting that after all the process may in some of its aspects be comparable with that of inheritance, but the student of genetics, as long as he can keep in close touch with a profitable basis of material fact, will scarcely be tempted to look for inspiration in psychical analogies."

"In Darwin's time no serious attempt had been made to examine the manifestations of variability. A vast assemblage of miscellaneous facts could formerly be adduced as seemingly comparable illustrations of the phenomenon "Variation." Time has shown this mass of evidence to be capable of analysis. When first promulgated it produced the impression that variability was a phenomenon generally distributed amongst living things in such a way that the specific divisions must be arbitrary. When this variability is sorted out, and is seen to be in part a result of hybridisation, in part a consequence of the persistence of hybrids by parthenogenetic reproduction, a polymorphism due to the continued presence of individuals representing various combinations of Mendelian allelomorphs, partly also the transient effect of alteration in external circumstances, we see how cautious we must be in drawing inferences as to the indefiniteness of specific limits from a bare knowledge that intermediates exist."

"I am well aware that some very eminent systematists regard the whole problem as solved. They hold as Darwin did that specific diversity has no physiological foundation or causation apart from adaptation, and that species are impermanent groups, the delimitations of which are ultimately determined by environmental exigency or "fitness." The specific diversity of living things is thus regarded as being something quite different in nature from the specific diversity of inorganic substances. In practice those who share these opinions are, as might be anticipated, to be found among the 'lumpers' rather than among the 'splitters.' In their work, certainly, the Darwinian theory is actually followed as a guiding principle; unanalysed intergradations of all kinds are accepted as impugning the integrity of species; the underlying physiological problem is forgotten, and while the product is almost valueless as a contribution to biological research, I can scarcely suppose that it aids greatly in the advances of other branches of our science."

"In spite of Darwin's hopes, the acceptance of his views has led to no real improvement — scarcely indeed to any change at all in either the practice or aims of systematists. In a famous passage in the Origin he confidently declares that when his interpretation is generally adopted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species will cease." Those disputes nevertheless proceed almost exactly as before. It is true that biologists in general do not, as formerly, participate in these discussions because they have abandoned systematics altogether; but those who are engaged in the actual work of naming and cataloguing animals and plants usually debate the old questions in the old way. There is still the same divergence of opinion and of practice, some inclining to make much of small differences, others to neglect them. Not only does the work of the sytematists as a whole proceed as if Darwin had never written but their attitude towards these problems is but little changed."

"Few who are familiar with the facts that genetic research has revealed are now inclined to speculate as to the manner by which the process [species come into existence] has been accomplished. Our knowledge of the nature and properties of living things is far too meagre to justify any such attempts. Suggestions of course can be made: though, however, these ideas may have a stimulating value in the lecture room, they look weak and thin when set out in print."

"As systematic inquiry into the natural facts was begun it was at once found that the accepted ideas of variation were unfounded. Variation was seen very frequently to be a definite and specific phenomenon, affecting different forms of life in different ways, but in all its diversity showing manifold and often obvious indications of regularity. This observation was not in its essence novel. Several examples of definite variation had been well known to Darwin and others, but many, especially Darwin himself in his later years, had nevertheless been disposed to depreciate the significance of such facts. They consequently then lapsed into general disparagement. Upon more careful inquiry the abundance of such phenomena proved to be far greater than was currently supposed, and a discussion of their nature brought into prominence a consideration of greater weight, namely that the differences by which these definite or discontinuous variations are constituted again and again approximate to and are comparable with the class of differences by which species are distinguished from each other."

"In the light of the new knowledge various plausible, but frequently unsatisfying, suggestions put forward, especially by Wallace, Weismann, and their followers, as probable accounts of evolutionary progress, must be finally abandoned."

"That the variations are controlled by physiological law, we have now experimental proof; but that this control is guided ever so little in response to the needs of adaptation there is not the smallest sign."

"The concept of evolution as proceeding through the gradual transformation of masses of individuals by the accumulation of impalpable changes is one that the study of genetics shows immediately to be false. Once for all, that burden so gratuitously undertaken in ignorance of generic physiology by the evolutionists of the last century may be cast into oblivion. For the facts of heredity and variation unite to prove that genetic variation is a phenomenon of individuals."