Ernest Lawrence Quotes

I am a particle physicist, which is the nearest branch to nuclear physics. So in that sense I was the sort of right connection with the subject of nuclear energy and so on.

I did a thesis in experimental nuclear physics under the direction of Samuel K. Allison.

After about 1940, scientists generally stopped looking for elements in nature. Instead, they had to create them by smashing smaller atoms together.

The discovery that light elements could be disintegrated by artificially accelerated particles gave an additional impetus to development work on the various methods of producing them.

For it goes without saying that this great recognition at this time will aid tremendously our efforts to find the necessarily large funds for the next voyage of exploration farther into the depths of the atom.

In England and the United States, where physicists have at their disposal equipment of very high voltages, several new elements were prepared using protons and deuterons as projectiles.

Information of fundamental importance to the general problem of atomic structure has resulted from systematic studies of the cosmic radiation carried out by the Wilson cloud-chamber method.

I was interested in nuclei originally with my deuteron photo work because that was one of the fundamental forces, and the measurement was basic to new science.

When I was 10 years old, that nuclear spark hit me. Whatever it may be, I really don't know what it was about nuclear science, but whatever it was that triggered that interest, it stuck. I went after that one with a passion.

Nuclear fission

The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable.

Deep in the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil.

When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all — except life. We shall have found the basis of everything — of the earth we walk on, of the air we breathe, of the sunshine, of our physical body itself, of everything in the world, however great or however small — except life.

Leave the atom alone.

In 1947 I defended my thesis on nuclear physics, and in 1948 I was included in a group of research scientists whose task was to develop nuclear weapons.

One of the principal achievements of physics in the 20th century has been the revelation that the atom is not indivisible or elementary at all but has a complex structure.

Until four years ago, in fact, I was absolutely in love with the atom.

Nuclear physics is interesting but it is unlikely to help society.

Originally I had planned to revert to nuclear physics there, in particular the structure of the deuteron.

Investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together was a long task.

Although important nuclear physics work was to go on in laboratories such as ours had become - and we had to cut down to a lower energy group - it was not fundamentally opening up new insights on the structure of matter. That required you to be in a higher league.

Fission is like kissing your wife. Fusion is like kissing your mistress.

In the spring of 1948, I was able to join the newly created Brookhaven National Laboratory, which was dedicated to finding peaceful uses for atomic energy.

The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches.