Memorable quotes in the history of physics

[pines-demon]

This is another follow up in my campaign to have a separate forum for history of science. Similar to my on-going thread Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics? this one would be about specific quotes.

What are some of the memorable quotes said by physicists? [I will allow mathematicians this time]

Here is one by Max Planck:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

From Planck (1950), Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers.

 

[fresh_42]

"God made the integers, man made the rest." ~ Leopold Kronecker

 

[phinds]

Attributed variously (partially) to Mark Twain, also (partially) to John Wheeler. Regardless of attribution, it's a great statement

Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once and space is what keeps it all from happening to me.

 

[fresh_42]

"Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them." ~ Werner Heisenberg

 

[Klystron]

"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."

First known (English) communication by wired telephony. Scientist / engineer Alexander Grahm Bell calls for assistance from lab electrician Thomas Watson, his voice detected and transmitted by a prototype telephone rig. 1876

edit 20250220: added English language to quote as precedence may be murky. Many people experimented with early radio and telephone designs. So, citation may be apocryphal but, nontheless, cool.

 

[fresh_42]

"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."

First known communication by wired telephony. Scientist / engineer Alexander Grahm Bell calls for assistance from lab electrician Thomas Watson, his voice detected and transmitted by a prototype telephone rig. 1876

More than 10 years late, but I couldn't find what Reis first transmitted.

 

[Klystron]

More than 10 years late, but I couldn't find what Reis first transmitted.

"Maria hatte ein kleines Lamm..."

Joke: Supposedly Thomas Edison's first successful wax recording heard him shouting children's poem, "Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow.".

 

[jtbell]

Isidor Isaac Rabi's response to the discovery of the muon, with the same properties as the electron except for a mass about 200x greater:

"Who ever ordered that?"

https://cds.cern.ch/record/1728816/files/vol6-issue8-p152-e.pdf

 

[Hornbein]

That might work in physics, but I dunno about history or medicine.

 

[berkeman]

"Wrong again, Albert." ~Stephen Hawking

Spoiler

from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Descent”

 

[pines-demon]

Before anybody claims this one:

Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!

A classic.

 

[pines-demon]

From Richard Feynman on the inability to teach how to think:

The problem of how to deduce new things from old, and how to solve problems, is really very difficult to teach, and I don’t really know how to do it. I don’t know how to tell you something that will transform you from a person who can’t analyze new situations or solve problems, to a person who can. In the case of the mathematics, I can transform you from somebody who can’t differentiate to somebody who can, by giving you all the rules. But in the case of the physics, I can’t transform you from somebody who can’t to somebody who can, so I don’t know what to do.

From Gottlieb, Leighton, Feynman's Tips on Physics, chap. 2, sec 2.6.

Thanks to @Albertus Magnus.

 

[Albertus Magnus]

"Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them." ~ Werner Heisenberg

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

 

[Albertus Magnus]

"Wir mussen wissen - wir werden wissen!" - David Hilbert
(Translates into English as: "We must know - we will know!")

 

[WernerQH]

Looking at my copy of Adventures of a Mathematician by Stanislav Ulam I just discovered this gem:

The axiomatic approach to physical theories is to physics what grammar is to literature. Such mathematical clarity need not be conceptually crucial for physics.

(p.295)

 

[WernerQH]

It has a similar ring as Feynman's dismissive remark on philosophy of science:

Philosophy of science is probably as useful to scientists as ornithology is for birds.

 

[pines-demon]

How could I forget:

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Ernst Rutherford

 

[Hornbein]

How could I forget:

Ernst Rutherford

That one I don't understand.

 

[fresh_42]

How could I forget:
...
Ernst Rutherford

I know a lot of mathematicians who would strongly disagree.

DYK that Rutherford had several signs placed all over his lab saying "speak quietly" because he used to be very loud which annoyed everyone.

 

[pines-demon]

That one I don't understand.

For me it has always meant there are two types of findings, those that require deep analysis and those that are just "findings" like just publishing because you found an odd galactic cluster, or some pink bird, or some new chemical compound, and so on without motivating much on why that is interesting aside from being new.

 

[hutchphd]

"E pur si muove" ​

 

[pines-demon]

"E pur si muove" ​

Lets get the classics out:

Ευρηκα!​

 

[pinball1970]

Common sense, "the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen".

Einstein.

 

[pinball1970]

On the discovery of the positron.

"My equation is cleverer than I am "

Paul Dirac.

 

[fresh_42]

Old Ernesto being British meant ...

???

 

[pines-demon]

Old Ernesto being British meant to scald fellow scientists with his burning wit. "Stamp collecting" may have been a reference to the relatively new fields of statistical and numerical analysis where the action, so to speak, occurs outside a physical laboratory.

IMS IIRC, Isaac Asimov in an essay describes Rutherford's resistance to numerical techniques encroaching on 'actual Physics'. Asimov may have 'named names' of which Rutherford contemporary collected postal stamps as a hobby. I say, let the dead past bury the vitriol with the outsized egos.

How is statistics and numerical calculations post collecting? He clearly is referring to other sciences...

Edit: the quote appears in Rutherford at Manchester by J. B. Birks, and the only other science compared there with physics is chemistry.

 

[martinbn]

???

I guess being from New Zealand makes you kind of british.

 

[Hornbein]

"This idiot race that believes it has free will."
-- Albert Einstein on World War One

 

[martinbn]

By the way he got a Nobel in chemistry. There was a quote, which i don't remember and cannot find, but it goes along the lines that from all transformations of matter that he had studied the most amazing one is how he transformed from a physicist to a chemist.

 

[pines-demon]

By the way he got a Nobel in chemistry. There was a quote, which i don't remember and cannot find, but it goes along the lines that from all transformations of matter that he had studied the most amazing one is how he transformed from a physicist to a chemist.

Quote:

I have dealt with many different transformations with various periods of time, but the quickest that I have met was my own transformation in one moment from a physicist to a chemist. (Nobel banquet)

Source: https://cerncourier.com/a/rutherfords-nobel-prize-and-the-one-he-didnt-get/