John Charles Polanyi
John Charles Polanyi
John Charles Polanyi, PC CC FRSC OOnt FRSis a Hungarian-Canadian chemist who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his research in chemical kinetics. Polanyi was educated at the University of Manchester, and did postdoctoral research at the National Research Council in Canada and Princeton University in New Jersey. Polanyi's first academic appointment was at the University of Toronto, and he remains there as of 2014. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Polanyi has received numerous other awards, including...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 January 1929
CountryCanada
Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.
Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.
For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.
Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.
Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]
The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.
Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.
[Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual courage is even rarer than physical courage.
Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.