All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment.
All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.
Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.
When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all — except life. We shall have found the basis of everything — of the earth we walk on, of the air we breathe, of the sunshine, of our physical body itself, of everything in the world, however great or however small — except life.
It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back to hit you.
A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.
Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It's time to start thinking.
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
Every good laboratory consists of first rate men working in great harmony to insure the progress of science; but down at the end of the hall is an unsociable, wrong-headed fellow working on unprofitable lines, and in his hands lies the hope of discovery.
The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don't.
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.
We haven't got the money, so we'll have to think
We are rather like children, who must take a watch to pieces to see how it works.
I am a great believer in the simplicity of things and as you probably know I am inclined to hang on to broad & simple ideas like grim death until evidence is too strong for my tenacity.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the ‘social sciences’ is: some do, some don’t.
The more physics you have the less engineering you need.
Gentlemen, now you will see that now you see nothing. And why you see nothing you will see presently.
Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. .... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.
I must confess it was very unexpected and I am very startled at my metamorphosis into a chemist.
It is essential for men of science to take an interest in the administration of their own affairs or else the professional civil servant will step in - and then the Lord help you.
Now I know what the atom looks like.
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.
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I've just finished reading some of my early papers, and you know, when I'd finished I said to myself, 'Rutherford, my boy, you used to be a damned clever fellow.' (1911)
I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies...
From the results so far obtained it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-range atoms arising from collision of alpha particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen atoms but probably atoms of hydrogen, or atoms of mass 2. If this be the case, we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated under the intense forces developed in a close collision with a swift alpha particle, and that the hydrogen atom which is liberated formed a constituent part of the nitrogen nucleus.
The year 1896 ... marked the beginning of what has been aptly termed the heroic age of Physical Science. Never before in the history of physics has there been witnessed such a period of intense activity when discoveries of fundamental importance have followed one another with such bewildering rapidity.
