Frits Zernike Quotes

One of the primary ways that astronomers study stars is to spread their light out into a rainbow, which we call a spectrum, and from that rainbow, we can learn something about what the stars are composed of and how hot they are, how bright they are, and how they're moving, at least how they're moving toward or away from us.

The movement of the emitters of the spectral lines may be deduced on the basis of the Doppler principle.

We should note that this latter type of shift was successfully amplified to a considerable extent by Russian physicists using the intense light of a ruby laser whose wavelength is close to that of a transition of the potassium atom.

The pattern of things was that each of the research students would be doing some particular experiment on the accelerator, often involving the building of counters or a system like that.

During exposure, interference takes place between the incident rays and those reflected by the mirror, with the formation of interference fringes half a wavelength distant from each other.

Mark Horowitz and I built it onto an optical bench in the lab. We spent and eight-hour span putting this optical light path together.

It's not very fun to do spectroscopy.

There's truth in light. You can tell what elements a star is composed of and the temperature at which it burns by the light it gives off.

The visible and near-ultraviolet emission spectrum of the CH radical has been known ever since spectra of an ordinary Bunsen burner have been taken.

Light is therefore color.

I want to know one thing, what is color?

We were trying to do as much science as we could because that was the main purpose of the international space station. But without the shuttle to bring up heavy laboratory equipment and bring back samples, we were limited by what we could do, but I was proud that we actually accomplished more science that was planned for the flight. And I got a chance to do two Russian spacewalks on that flight, I had become an expert in U.S. spacewalks and using U.S. suits and techniques, and this was a chance to put on a Russian Orlan suit and do two construction space flights outside of the space station.

But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.

I realized why I need to start a new company. Not for the money. Not because I'm 'bored'. But because a company is a laboratory to try your ideas.

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

The eye transmits its own image through the air to all the objects which face it, and also receives them on its own surface, whence the "sensus communis" takes them and considers them.

From what has been said it is also evident, that the Whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded all the Colours wherewith the several sorts of Rays whereof that Light consists, when by their several Refrangibilities they are separated from one another, do tinge Paper or any other white Body whereon they fall. For those Colours ... are unchangeable, and whenever all those Rays with those their Colours are mix'd again, they reproduce the same white Light as before.

I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem like a kind of magic.

(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

I think it [presidency of Dwight Eisenhower] came too late and I think that he is not on the wavelength of this dreadful time through which we're living.

This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort or minute objects.

When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.

Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

I came out of independent film, that's my roots. I used my independent film as a laboratory, and used what I could discover in that laboratory.