History Of Physics Quotes

“Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Einstein broke everything again. Now, we’ve basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time”
― Zach Weinersmith, Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness

“The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics. We believe that any regression to the ideas of classical physics (as, for instance, to the use of the classical field concept)cannot bring us nearer to this goal. To reach it, we shall, presumably, have to pay with further revolutionary changes of the fundamental concepts of physics with a still farther digression from the concepts of the classical theories.”
― Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy

“One of the most curious of these stories about Pauli concerns the number 137. One of the great unsolved mysteries of modern physics is the value of the fine structure constant, for while the other fundamental constants of nature are all immensely small or enormously large, this fine structure constant 1/137 turns out to be a human-sized number. This number 137 and its place in the scale of the universe particularly puzzled Pauli and continues to challenge physicists today. I was a mystery that Pauli was to take to his death, for on being admitted into the hospital, the physicist was told that he was being put into room 137. According to one version of this story on learning of his room number, Pauli said, "I will never get out of here." The physicist died shortly after.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“Sommerfeld's fine-structure theory was generally considered to be excellently and unambiguously confirmed by experiment. Because the theory rested on the foundation provided by Bohr, the experiments were also taken as strong support for his theory of atomic structure.”
― Helge Kragh, Niels Bohr and the Quantum Atom: The Bohr Model of Atomic Structure 1913-1925

“The first physicist to stress the all-encompassing role of [the fine-structure constant] and [the proton/electron mass ratio] in determining the inevitable structure of atomic systems seems to have been Max Born.”
― John D. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

“I introduce the subject of fine structure with a mini-calendar of events. ...

Winter 1914-15. Sommerfeld computes relativistic orbits for hydrogen-like atoms. Pashcen, aware of these studies, carefully investigates fine structures, ....

January 6, 1916. Sommerfeld announces his fine structure formula, citing results to be published by Paschen in support of his answer.

February 1916. Einstein to Sommerfeld: "A revelation!"

March 1916. Bohr to Sommerfeld: "I do not believe ever to have read anything with more joy than your beautiful work."

September 1916. Paschen publishes his work, acknowledging Sommerfeld's "indefatigable efforts.”
― Abraham Pais , Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World

“The bridge between the electron and the other elementary particles is provided by the fine structure constant. ... An expanded form of the constant leads to equations that define the transformation of electromagnetic energy into electron mass/energy, ...”
― Malcolm H. Mac Gregor, The Enigmatic Electron: A Doorway to Particle Masses

“If QED [quantum electrodynamics] is merely a phenomenology, how can one account for its remarkable quantitative success? The answer is intimately related to one of its most characteristic features, renormalizability. Because of this, short distance, high energy effects in QED can be absorbed into a finite number of measurable masses and charges. For the first time in the history of physics, there exists a theory which has no obvious intrinsic limitation and enables us in principle to calculate physical phenomena to any accuracy we need in terms of a few measurable parameters such as the elementary electric charge e [fine structure constant] and the electron mass m. Thus the detailed high energy structure of the ultimate theory is irrelevant to the analysis of low energy phenomena except insofar as it determines these parameters. [Quantum Electrodynamics]”
― Toichiro Kinoshita

“The story of random number generation is itself quite a fascinating one, and would be an entire article in itself.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern

“In the early days of atomic physics [before quantum field theory revealed the true meaning of the fine structure constant to be the strength of the coupling between the electron and photon], it was thought to have a value so close to being precisely 1/137 that numerologists started to establish cultish associations with the number 137.”
― Bruce A. Schumm, Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics