While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics.
If you want to help Africa, you should help them out of poverty, not try to build solar cells and windmills.
My own beliefs are that the road to a scientific discovery is seldom direct and that it does not necessarily require great expertise. In fact, I am convinced that often a newcomer to a field has a great advantage because he is ignorant and does not know all the complicated reasons why a particular experiment should not be attempted.
There are 15 main theories in physics, and we know all of them. If there weren't a finite number of theories, there would not be a point to physics.
When I was 28 years old, I found myself in Schenectady, New York, where I discovered that it was possible for some people to make a good living as physicists.
You need to be curious, competitive, creative, stubborn, self-confident, skeptical, patient and be lucky to win a Nobel.
I don't really know what the future of science is. Maybe we have come to the end of science; maybe science is a finite field. The inventions resulting from this finite field, however, are boundless.
There are just two things you can do to win a Nobel prize - have a good idea and pursue it effectively.
If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.
Science is to find something unknown, while invention is to make something new out of the known theory.
If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.
Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don't really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money.