Charles H. Townes Quotes

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

When I started on my research, I never expected I could invent the LED and laser diode.

There is no doubt that I, also, had long been aware of the problem, i.e. producing X-ray interferences, before the inherent difficulties had finally been surmounted.

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.

Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge.

I imagined there would be a way to crack the diffraction barrier. But of course I didn't know exactly how it would work, but I had a gut feeling that there must be something, and so I tried to think about it, to be creative.

Synergy and serendipity often play a big part in medical and scientific advances.

On the basis of Lorentz's theory, if we limit ourselves to a single spectral line, it suffices to assume that each atom (or molecule) contains a single moving electron.

At the head of these new discoveries and insights comes the establishment of the facts that electricity is composed of discrete particles of equal size, or quanta, and that light is an electromagnetic wave motion.

The main ingredient of the first quantum revolution, wave-particle duality, has led to inventions such as the transistor and the laser that are at the root of the information society.

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.

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.

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.

Photons have neither morals or visas.

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

Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed.

There is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us .... One day man will release and control its almost infinite power.

Basic research, performed for curiosity today, will drive the innovations years from now. When qunatum mecahnics was curioisty-driven basic research 80 years ago, no none had any inkling that there would be prectical cosequences of it. However today much more than half of entire gross nationa product was and is dependent on quantum mechanics. Cell phones, computers, and all the things we enjory were innovations that could not have taken place without an understanding of quantum mechanics.

It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.

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

With the right policies and regulations, the opportunities for American medical advancement and scientific innovation are boundless.

Nobody ever told us all matter radiated. We just assumed it did.

Wellcome Trust focuses on supporting outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research, and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts. We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.

McMaster had an engineering physics program and... one of the parts of it was lasers and electro-optics and I just said, 'Now doesn't that sound cool. I just got to do that.'

For her PhD, Maria Goeppert Mayer, a theoretical physicist, came up with the idea of multi-photon physics. That means an atom absorbs two or more photons simultaneously.