Abraham Pais

There is not a soul on Earth who can read the deluge of physics publications in its entirety. As a result, it…

— Abraham Pais

Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that…

— Abraham Pais

One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I…

— Abraham Pais

“Special relativity killed the classical dream of using the energy-momentum-velocity relations of a particle as a means of probing the dynamic origins…

— Abraham Pais

Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches…

— Abraham Pais

“All modern work on unification may be said to represent a program of geometrization that resembles Einstein's earlier attempts, although the manifold…

— Abraham Pais

“Promising steps have been made toward grand unification, the union of weak, electromagnetic, and strong interactions in one compact, non-Abelian gauge group.…

— Abraham Pais

I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I…

— Abraham Pais

[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review…

— Abraham Pais

Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text.

— Abraham Pais

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were…

— Abraham Pais

The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr.…

— Abraham Pais

“The preceding collection of stories about Einstein the young boy demonstrates the remarkable extent to which his most characteristic personal traits were…

— Abraham Pais

“The ultimate unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions has probably not yet been achieved, but a solid beach-head appears to have been…

— Abraham Pais

Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have.…

— Abraham Pais

“He understood that the sources of the gravitational field were not just ponderable matter but also field energy. He realized that gravitational…

— Abraham Pais

A number of current theoretical explorations will turn out to be passing fancies...

— Abraham Pais

[Heisenberg's seminal 1925 paper initiating quantum mechanics marked] one of the great jumps—perhaps the greatest—in the development of twentieth century physics.

— Abraham Pais

“he described his own ideals, the desire for fulfillment not just as a theorist but also as an experimental physicist. (In the…

— Abraham Pais

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

— Abraham Pais

One of the absolute rules I learned in the war was, don't know anything you don't need to know, because if you…

— Abraham Pais

“Weak, electromagnetic, and strong interactions have distinct intrinsic symmetry properties, but this hierarchy of symmetries is not well understood theoretically. Perhaps the…

— Abraham Pais

“He had no need to push the everyday world away from him. He just stepped out of it whenever he wished.”

— Abraham Pais

I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not…

— Abraham Pais