Barry Barish Quotes

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, one of the questions has been ticked off the list, but there are many others. We hope that we can find answers or hints for answers to at least some of them. But of course, this is in the hands of nature.

Actually, I was more or less determined to be a theoretical physicist at the age of thirteen.

Intellectual curiosity drove Einstein to some of the world's most important discoveries.

If the experimental physicist has already done a great deal of work in this field, nevertheless the theoretical physicist has still hardly begun to evaluate the experimental material which may lead him to conclusions about the structure of the atom.

Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.

During this time I had the singular good fortune of being able to discuss the problem constantly with Einstein. Some experiments done at Einstein's suggestion yielded no decisively new result.

There are relatively few experiments in atomic physics these days that don't involve the use of a laser.

Janet Landis came to work in my group in the summer of 1957 when our first bubble-chamber was churning out its earliest pictures.

I can only speak for particle physics. But it has become obvious that on the experimental side, there has been a huge evolution in the number of people who have to collaborate because of the gigantic size of the instruments used, but also because of the enormous task that is data analysis.

Experimental high energy physics research is a group effort. I have been very fortunate to have had outstanding students and colleagues who have made invaluable contributions to the research with which I have been associated.

My background is in theoretical physics, and it's something very close to my heart.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.

One of the biggest and most important tools of theoretical physics is the wastebasket.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is the world's greatest pure physics thinktank, and it's located here in Canada, in Waterloo, Ont.

Theoretical physics hardly requires any research funding, so I never felt the need. The overall government and institutional support has been good enough for my work.

I studied physics at university, and I'm still a sucker for an experiment or scientific theory.

I thought I wanted to be a physicist in high school until I learned that there was much more math than philosophy in it. I assumed I would just sit around all day and think.

I was always very curious about what a scientist's life was like when I was young. Of course, when I was young, you didn't have very many opportunities to find out with no web, TV. I was very lucky: I was born in the city of Chicago and went to the University of Chicago where I actually saw things.

If, as is the custom, I speak mainly about my own researches, I must say that I was fortunate in finding that not everything had yet been gleaned in the field of general thermodynamic radiation theory.

The conquest of space is not merely a technological project of interest to a handful of select scientists and specialists, valuable though that research and information may be.

Scientists don't read theology; they don't read philosophy. It doesn't make any difference to what they're doing - for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it's true.

In the spring of 1929, I returned to the United States. I was homesick for this country. I had learned in my student days a great deal about the new physics. I wanted to pursue this myself, to explain it, and to foster its cultivation.

Many of my friends are scientists.

Fundamental science that may not achieve results must be supported at the state level.