Max Born
Max Born
Max Bornwas a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function"...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth11 December 1882
CountryGermany
peace war mean
The human race has today the means for annihilating itself--either in a fit of complete lunacy, i.e., in a big war...or by the careless handling of atomic technology, through a slow process of poisoning and of deterioration in its genetic structure.
art mean fate
During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima.
mean body adequate
The difficulty involved in the proper and adequate means of describing changes in continuous deformable bodies is the method of differential equations. ... They express mathematically the physical concept of contiguous action. Einstein's Theory of Relativity
skills littles scientist
It is true that many scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom.
father character son
It is a fascinating fact that father and son have given the most striking evidence for the apparently contradictory properties of the electron: the father proving its character as a particle, the son its character as a wave... Thomson was extremely proud of his son's success and tried to assimilate the new results into his old convictions.
order perfect use
If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.
philosophy law numbers
If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.
civilization tradition
Science?is so greatly opposed to history and tradition that it cannot be absorbed by our civilization.
believe thinking blessing
I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.
technology age ethical
All attempts to adapt our ethical code to our situation in the technological age have failed.
philosophy theoretical-physics convinced
I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.
believe two scientific-method
There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method.
roots evil world
The belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world.
roots evil world
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.