John Desmond Bernal
John Desmond Bernal
John Desmond Bernal FRSwas a scientist and was a pioneer in X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He also published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal was a political supporter of Communism and wrote popular books on subjects connecting science and society...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth10 May 1901
CountryIreland
funny-inspirational learning ignorance
The full area of ignorance is not mapped. We are at present only exploring the fringes.
life plato appreciated
The beauty of life is, therefore, geometrical beauty of a type that Plato would have much appreciated.
life men want
Men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it.
country science successful
In England, more than in any other country, science is felt rather than thought. ... A defect of the English is their almost complete lack of systematic thinking. Science to them consists of a number of successful raids into the unknown.
giving-up simple stupidity
In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an amiable individual defect, has become a social crime.
science shrinking mysterious
The region of the mysterious is rapidly shrinking.
science birth certain
We are still too close to the birth of the universe to be certain about its death.
communication army order
The problem is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order.
sex simple psychology
The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved.
oil agriculture textiles
The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing.
communism ifs
If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?
men common-purpose goal
In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal.
simple self ambitious
[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.
writing years work-out
In my own field, x-ray crystallography, we used to work out the structure of minerals by various dodges which we never bothered to write down, we just used them. Then Linus Pauling came along to the laboratory, saw what we were doing and wrote out what we now call Pauling's Rules. We had all been using Pauling's Rules for about three or four years before Pauling told us what the rules were.