Alan J. Heeger Quotes

Superconductivity helped broaden my professional phase space. When I started my work, it was already known that magnetic fields could quench superconductivity. I found that the transition was not continuous, that superconductivity was initially enhanced in the presence of magnetic fields, then it would suddenly fall off.

The scaling theory of localization demonstrated that the disorder-induced M-I transition was a true phase transition with a well defined critical point.

In spite of the evidence for the disorder-induced M-I transition as inferred from the transport and optical measurements, the metallic state of conjugated polymers has been a subject of controversy.

Graphene is a single plane of graphite that has to be pulled out of bulk graphite to show its amazing properties.

I would say there are three important things about graphene. It's two-dimensional, which is the best possible number for studying fundamental physics. The second thing is the quality of graphene, which stems from its extremely strong carbon-carbon bonds. And finally, the system is also metallic.

The well-known fact that the form of a specific substance, e.g. water, and hence its properties can alter without a change in composition was disposed of by the formal view that a physical, not a chemical, process was involved.

It seems like we are moving towards something, some kind of point and it is probably going to be an important point in our development or dissolution. That is what everybody seems to be thinking.

All that glitters may not be gold, but at least it contains free electrons.

When you get up, the night and day is a contradiction. But you get up at 4 a.m. — that first blush of blue is where the night and day are trying to find harmony with each other.

We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself... New materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make it.

It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.

Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it's teeming with energy and fraught with danger.

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

If you've got a brand new administration coming into office you want to have, at the very least, a national security team in place on day one.

If you travel as much as I do - 165,000 miles last year - you exist nowhere. You're always between heaven and earth, you're always arriving in a new place, you're always starting from the beginning - talk about origins - and you don't know quite what's going to unfold. You live in the unexpected and the inexplicable all the time.

Everyone is constantly transitioning.

But to everything in this world there comes an end; there even comes an end to the torments suffered in those intermediate states of transition when the last secret tear of one's soul is bitterly swallowed, and the crisis passes, resolving itself into some new sort of phase, which even as it comes into existence is fated in turn to pass away, to disappear in the eternal changing of the times and seasons.

Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products

School is school-she wants it to be over, but she's afraid of it being over, because then she'll have to figure out what comes next.

A run has never returned me exactly the same. I go, I grow.

I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.