Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alan Aldais an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is widely known for his roles as Captain Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He has also appeared in many feature films, most notably in Crimes and Misdemeanorsas pretentious television producer Lester and in The Aviatoras U.S. Senator Owen Brewster, the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth28 January 1936
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.
I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.
I feel like every time a door is opened by science, suddenly there are a hundred doors that need to get opened. That's what makes it an everlasting, interesting experience to go through.
If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.
It's very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.
Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they're having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.
I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.
I don't watch that much TV, so I can't compare one show to another. When I watch television, I watch people talking to one another usually or a science show where they show me microbes, you know. Microbes actually communicate quite a bit, and so there's a lot of talking going on.
We need to be more conversant with it because science is in our lives. It's in everything. It's in the food we eat. It's in the air we breathe. It's everywhere.
When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you're interested in the arts, you can't be interested in science.
No one can replace a unique person like Peter.
When the greatest hero in the history of my party, Abraham Lincoln, debated, he didn't need any rules, ... We could junk the rules.
I have a strong preference for being alive.
When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?