We know there is gravity because apples fall from trees. We can observe gravity in daily life. If we could throw an apple to the edge of the universe, we would observe it accelerating.
I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
While it was a very interesting period in my life, I was happy to get back to more direct contact with students in the classroom and in my research projects.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.
I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.
Moreover, the abundance of chemical compounds and their importance in daily life hindered the chemist from investigating the question, in what does the individuality of the atoms of different elements consist.
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
If I could do anything in my life and be remembered for anything, I would like to be remembered for helping the world see the value of physical engagement with ideas.
In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?
Most technological advances in our life now come from serendipitous discoveries. That is a contraction of rocket technology and computer technology and atomic clock technology.
We haven't yet found a speck of evidence for biology on another world, so we have no objective way to judge whether life is a onetime fluke or a near-inevitable phenomenon.
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
During my time at Watchung Hills Regional High School, I was fortunate to have a number of teachers who inspired me and filled me with enthusiasm for learning.
We are the laws of chemistry and physics as they have played out here on Earth, and we are now learning that planets are as common as stars. Most stars, as it turns out now, will have planets.
All renewables, much as I love them, are diffuse. They all have a small power per unit area, and we have to live with that fact.
The great object is to find the theory of the matter [of X-rays] before anyone else, for nearly every professor in Europe is now on the warpath.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
In talking to you I feel very much more at ease than my colleagues who gave the speeches during the banquet.
It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule.
How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons.
