Arthur Leonard Schawlow Quotes
To do successful research, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know one thing that isn't known.
Arthur Leonard Schawlow, 1921–1999, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, Quoted in Steven Chu and Charles H. Townes, Biographical Memoirs, 2003
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Von Braun never really did any basic research, and although a brilliant engineer and technologist who was instrumental in rocket development, he never made any contribution to science. Basic research has the greatest long term benefit and effect on human knowledge and standard of living, but applied science can have more short range utility.
Many important breakthroughs emanated from scientific curiosity of some scientist who was not thinking of any practical application at all.
Babbage anticipated the digital era when a small number of computer programmers develop a powerful program that can be used by millions of people who have no skill at programming.
It was not very long before there was no scientific field any longer in which any human being could learn everything that is known. Sherrington was one of the first to see that coming.
Arthur Leonard Schawlow was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser action from microwaves to visible wavelengths. He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work using lasers to determine atomic energy levels with great precision.