Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month,… — Abraham Pais Copy Share
There is not a soul on Earth who can read the deluge of physics publications in its entirety. As a result, it is sad… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
“Special relativity killed the classical dream of using the energy-momentum-velocity relations of a particle as a means of probing the dynamic origins of its mass. The relations are purely kinematic. The classical picture of a particle as a finite little sphere is also gone for good. Quantum field theory has taught us that particles nevertheless have structure, arising from quantum… — Abraham Pais Copy Share
Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years… — Abraham Pais Copy Share
“All modern work on unification may be said to represent a program of geometrization that resembles Einstein's earlier attempts, although the manifold subject to… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
“Promising steps have been made toward grand unification, the union of weak, electromagnetic, and strong interactions in one compact, non-Abelian gauge group. In most grand unifies theories the proton is unstable. News about the proton's fate is eagerly awaited at this time. Superunification, the union of all four forces, is the major goal. Some believe that it is near and… — Abraham Pais Copy Share
I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text. — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image
The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who… — Abraham Pais Copy Share Image