Saturday, October 24, 2009

Physics Quote of the Day (October 18 - October 24)

"The real point of honor [for a scientist] is not to be always right. It is to dare to propose new ideas, and then check them." Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, born 24 October 1932.

"...while I am certainly not asking you to close your eyes to the experiences of earlier generations, I want to advise you not to conform too soon and to resist the pressure of practical necessity. Free imagination is the inestimable prerogative of youth and it must be cherished and guarded as a treasure." Felix Bloch, born 23 October 1905.

"Discoveries in physics are made when the time for making them is ripe, and not before." Clinton Davisson, born 22 October 1881.

"I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life." Alfred Nobel, born 21 October 1833.

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination." John Dewey, born 20 October 1859.

"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." Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, born 19 October 1910.

"In quantum physics, however, each observation implies an intervention in the observed. Because of the quantum physical laws of nature, a change of state of the observed is inevitably coupled to the observation process. So it's not a situation independent from the experiment that is observed, but we ourselves call forth the facts (or compel them to go in a certain direction to a disambiguation), that then become an observation." Pascual Jordan, born 18 October 1902.

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