Why is there space rather than no space? Why is space three-dimensional? Why is space big? We have a lot of room to move around in. How come it's not tiny? We have no consensus about these things. We're still exploring them.
Physics is perceived as a lonesome, nerdy kind of enterprise that has very little to do with human feelings and the things that excite people day-to-day about each other. Yet physicists in their own working environment are very social creatures.
I'm doing physics because I'm curious about how it works - full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, don't worry about whether somebody is going to be able to do an experiment next week, just figure it out.
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded
There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea�...
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.
The United States is a leader across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Our technological prowess is part of our greatness as a nation. Sadly, among the rich industrialized nations, we also lead by a substantial margin in the rate of poverty am...
What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adapti...
I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own.
Humanity stands ... before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.
My first reaction on being awarded the Nobel Prize was, actually, I thought of Fischer Black, my colleague. He unfortunately had passed away. And there was no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive, he would have been a co-recipient of the Nobe...
Physics is the ultimate intellectual adventure, the quest to understand the deepest mysteries of our Universe. Physics doesn’t take something fascinating and make it boring. Rather, it helps us see more clearly, adding to the beauty and wonder of t...
My parents emigrated from Poland in 1924 with my brother, who was a few months old. They were from a simple family of Polish Jews. They were looking, I suppose, for a better economic life and were escaping from an anti-Semitic environment.
The cosmos is three times as old as Earth. During most of creation's 14 billion year history, our solar system wasn't around. Nonetheless, the early universe still had the right stuff for life, and contained worlds that were just as suitable for spaw...
Life is fragile: it thrives only in a narrow range of temperatures between freezing and boiling. How lucky that our planet is just the right distance from the sun: a little farther, and the death of the perpetual Antarctic winter - or worse - would p...
Ever since the infamous quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the feds had insisted that TV game shows be honest - or that at least they didn't cheat. So as a 'Dating Game' bachelor, I didn't know what I was going to be asked. The other bachelors and I we...
I am sure my fellow-scientists will agree with me if I say that whatever we were able to achieve in our later years had its origin in the experiences of our youth and in the hopes and wishes which were formed before and during our time as students.
Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. Georg...
I never had a single female professor throughout my whole education, from the beginning of university to the end. Even all the books were about men; I never really liked reading books about the history of science, and I never really understood why.
One of the things that always fascinated me about the Renaissance was that it was a time both of great scientific discovery and also of superstition and belief in magic. And so it was a period in which Galileo invented the telescope, but also a time ...
