Fine-structure-constant Quote by John Archibald Wheeler

It is quite true that many scientists, many physicists, maintain that the physical constants, the half dozen or so numbers that physicists have to…

— Richard Dawkins

“One hundred thirty-seven is the inverse of something called the fine-structure constant. ...The most remarkable thing about this remarkable number is that it is…

— Leon M. Lederman

“In the context of physics, 137 is equal to the integer part of the inverse of the fine structure constant ... The fine structure…

— Leon O Chua

“Even a good, inveterate atheist like physicist Richard Feynman once said of the fine structure constant, “All good theoretical physicists put this number up…

— Sam Kean

“The strength of the electromagnetic interaction, for example, is fixed by a number called the “fine-structure constant,” a famous quantity in physics that is…

— Sean Carroll

“The prime number 137 had continuously occupied Pauli's mind. It is an approximate value for a constant appearing in the fine structure theory of…

— K. V. Laurikainen

“The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the…

— Mario Livio

If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness],…

— Max Born

“There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e - the amplitude for a real electron to emit…

— Richard P. Feynman

“To calculate 'the' fine structure constant, 1/137, we would need a realistic model of just about everything, and this we do not have. In…

— Steven Weinberg

If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.

— Sam Kean

Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is…

— Daniel Tammet