Martin Fleischmann Quotes

I think there is value in having practising scientists as leaders of research institutions.

Written in 1895, Alfred Nobel's will endowed prizes for scientific research in chemistry, physics, and medicine. At that time, these fields were narrowly defined, and researchers were often classically trained in only one discipline. In the late 19th century, knowledge of science was not a requisite for success in other walks of life.

When I was the NIH director, I often expressed envy of institute directors: they had the money and ran the scientific programmes.

If you look at my track record as government chief scientific advisor, I've always recognized that all of the sciences are important to all of research, and we need a balance.

David Sainsbury has been good for science and good for innovation in the U.K. He has been an outstanding science minister and shown extraordinary passion and commitment to his portfolio.

I don't know how you overcome the dearth of scientists in the government positions.

In the big experiments, Atlas and CMS, we have something like 3,000 scientists each, and over 60 nationalities.

Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing.

In 1998, I set up and directed a research group at the Nanotechnology Institute newly created in the Research Center of Karlsruhe. This allowed to offer to former post-doctoral coworkers the opportunity to develop and to progressively set up independent research activities in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

We have to overthrow the idea that it's a diversion from 'real' work when scientists conduct high-quality research in the open. Publicly funded science should be open science. Improving the way that science is done means speeding us along in curing cancer, solving the problem of climate change and launching humanity permanently into space.

The hardest problems of pure and applied science can only be solved by the open collaboration of the world-wide scientific community.

To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority.

If there is any conflict between Congress and science, Congress will win. Congress is paying the bills.

The decline in funding for the physical sciences has put our Nation's capabilities for scientific innovation at risk.

The government needs good science, and I’m not willing to abdicate the role of advising the Administration and Congress on [science] policy.

There was nothing I knew that would indicate that if we could do it [create an atomic bomb], they [the Germans] couldn’t do it. Therefore I thought it was very important to try and cooperate. I felt I should do it in order to protect civilization. …

In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

The United States needs to be a leader in scientific research.

Some sciences need mutual support and assistance to develop. The majority of these are physical sciences. Mutual support has almost no use in other disciplines, such as attainment of intuitive knowledge of God or spiritual progress.

While a lab director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community. I learned this early in my career while I was leading the construction of the SPEAR facility.

Scientists have this stigma of being guys or women in white lab coats with no sense of humor, no passion, devoid of all emotion, and that has been the complete opposite of the scientists I've met.

Pierre Curie came to see me and showed a simple and sincere sympathy with my student life. Soon he caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and he asked me to share that life.

I have always thought it a great privilege to have as my colleague in the Palit Chair of Chemistry such a distinguished pioneer in scientific research and education in Bengal as Sir Prafulla Ray. It has been invariably my experience that I could count on his cooperation and sympathy in every matter concerning my scientific work.

In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.