Paul Dirac Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Understanding, Equations

• Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is so universally accepted is its mathematical beauty.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Example, Needs

• The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.

  Paul Dirac

  Lying, Science, Law

• When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Biographies, Rooms

• A good deal of my research in physics has consisted in not setting out to solve some particular problem, but simply examining mathematical equations of a kind that physicists use and trying to fit them together in an interesting way, regardless of any application that the work may have. It is simply a search for pretty mathematics. It may turn out later to have an application. Then one has good luck. At age 78.

  Paul Dirac

  Good Luck, Science, Mathematical Equations

• In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it is the exact opposite.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Opposites, People

  "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists". Book by by Robert Jungk, as translated by James Cleugh, p. 22, 1958.

• I think it is a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do.
  At age 60.

  Paul Dirac

  Beautiful, Science, Thinking

  "Interview with Dr. P. A. M. Dirac" by Thomas S. Kuhn at Dirac's home, Cambridge, England, May 7, 1963.

• I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Talking, Long

• Well, in the first place, it leads to great anxiety as to whether it's going to be correct or not ... I expect that's the dominating feeling. It gets to be rather a fever... At age 60, when asked about his feelings on discovering the Dirac equation.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Anxiety, Feelings

• The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Law, Simplicity

• I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Sight, Interesting

• It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

  Paul Dirac

  Taken, Science, Views

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature". Article republished from May 1963 issue of Scientific American, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.

• Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future... If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them... My own belief is that this is a more likely line of progress than trying to guess at physical pictures.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Discovery, People

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature" by Paul Dirac, blogs.scientificamerican.com. May 1963.

• As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen.

  Paul Dirac

  Nature, Science, Interesting

• A great deal of my work is just playing with equations and seeing what they give.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Giving, Biographies

  Howard Baer, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Alexander Belyaev (2003). “Proceedings of the Dirac Centennial Symposium: Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA, 6-7 December 2002”, p.45, World Scientific

• Hopes are always accompanied by fears, and, in scientific research, the fears are liable to become dominant.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Research, Liable

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