Michael Smith Quotes

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.

If I could change the science system, my prescription for changing the whole thing would be organising it around big goals and building teams to do it.

I was invited to join the newly established Central Chemical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1954 and was able to establish a small research group in organic chemistry, housed in temporary laboratories of an industrial research institute.

The U.S. has the finest research scientists in the world, but we are falling far behind other countries, like South Korea and Singapore, that are moving forward with embryonic stem cell research.

It takes years to realize the multiple benefits of science; without adequate, sustained funding for research, the careers of many bright, young scientists may come to a screeching halt.

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

After forty years in the lab, I was asked in 1991 to become president of The Rockefeller University. Unlike a working scientist, being president for seven years provided an opportunity to interact with scientists in many different fields and broadened my scope of the natural sciences.

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

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

Research in any domain of science today requires specialized training to build up knowledge and clinical competence. To make major breakthroughs, we need people with expertise who are engaged in sustained research over a long period of time - in a word, scientists.

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

As the Nation's primary supporter of research in the physical sciences, the DOE Office of Science led the way in creating a unique system of large-scale, specialized, often one-of-a-kind facilities for scientific discovery.

In this time of budget cuts, we cannot forget that basic science is a building block for scientific innovation and economic growth in the information age.

The tension between public and private science is powerful.

Science is far from the center of the world for most people: even for many with highly sophisticated tastes, interests, and accomplishments.

A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.

I can't ever remember not wanting to be a scientist.

My three years at the NIH were critical in my scientific education. I learned an immense amount about the research process: developing assays, purifying macromolecules, documenting a discovery by many approaches, and writing clear manuscripts describing what is known and what remains to be investigated.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

When I was a child, it was cool to be a scientist.

At the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, we have long had a tradition of close cooperation between physicists and technicians.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

I count myself fortunate to be able to participate in the life of science in this era.