Ahmed Zewail Quotes

With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail.

In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a 'failed experiment.' Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.

A basic truth that the history of the creation of the transistor reveals is that the foundations of transistor electronics were created by making errors and following hunches that failed to give what was expected.

Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

The love of experiment was very strong in him [Charles Darwin], and I can remember the way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday.

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts.

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.

After all, what else is scientific enquiry of any sort other than a controlled version of banging one's head against the universe until something gives?

Discoveries are made by pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge.

Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?

The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.

The element of chance in basic research is overrated. Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those few who know how to make her smile.

Experiment is the mother of knowledge.

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.

I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.

Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity.

An experiment disproving a prediction is discovery.

With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.

All discoveries in art and science result from an accumulation of errors.

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?

[In the case of research director, Willis R. Whitney, whose style was to give talented investigators as much freedom as possible, you may define "serendipity" as] the art of profiting from unexpected occurrences. When you do things in that way you get unexpected results. Then you do something else and you get unexpected results in another line, and you do that on a third line and then all of a sudden you see that one of these lines has something to do with the other. Then you make a discovery that you never could have made by going on a direct road.

Just think of all the billions of coincidences that don't happen.