Research Pressure Quotes

Personally, I liked working for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector ... they expect results!

The work requires a moderately large investment in technological and theoretical developments and long periods of time to carry them out, without the pressure to achieve quick or short term results.

Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.

Science or research is always under pressure to deliver something which can be used immediately for society.

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies.

I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.

I'm an academic. It's publish or perish.

The thing about research is that there's no end. You constantly have this fear that an expert who knows more than you will call you out on some detail in your book.

I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research university.

For me, writing a historical novel was really hard. I love history as a subject and majored in it in college. I think, in a way, my training made it worse for me because I knew how important it was to focus on document-based analysis, and I really didn't want to get stuff wrong.

The scientists do not get enough help, enough encouragement, to change their field from time to time because the pressure is too high or is to perform something. And once you start in a new field, you are a nobody to start with, you see.