Ernest Rutherford

I came into the room which was half-dark and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience, and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the Earth, where my views conflicted with his. To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me. Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source [of heat] was discovered. That prophetic utterance referred to what we are now considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.

As quoted in "Rutherford's Timebomb" in The New Zealand (15 May 2004), 2004

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.

As quoted in The Wit and Wisdom of the 20th Century : A Dictionary of Quotations‎ (1987) by Frank S. Pepper, p. 226, 1987

I know what the atom looks like!

David Wilson, Rutherford, Simple Genius (1983), 1983

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

As quoted in Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (1973) by G. J. Whitrow, p. 42, 1973

Don't let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department.

As quoted by John Kendrew in "J.D. Bernal and the Origin of Life," BBC Radio Talk (26 July 1968), and in Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists, Third Edition by John Daintith, p. 662, 1968

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

As quoted by Norman T. J. Bailey, The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine (1967), Chapter 2, "The Role of Probability and Statistics", 1967

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

As quoted in Rutherford at Manchester (1962) by J. B. Birks. The earliest known attribution of the principle to Rutherford was by John Desmond Bernal in 1939https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/08/stamp/, 1962

It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery—a bolt from the blue, as it were—you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man on another, and it is this mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected.

As quoted in The Birth of a New Physics (1959) by I. Bernard Cohen, 1959

It is just as surprising as if a gunner fired a shell at a single sheet of paper and for some reason or other the projectile bounded back again.

Rutherford, discussing the results of a 1909 experiment investigating alpha particle scattering, during the Cawthron Lecture at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, New Zealand in 1925. Quoted in Arthur Stewart Eve (1939). Rutherford: Being the Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Lord Rutherford, O. M., p. 311, 1939

It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

From a lecture delivered on October 15, 1936 at Cambridge University,Report on the Activities of the History of Science Lectures Committee 1936–1947, Whipple Museum Papers, Whipple Museum for the History of Science, Cambridge, C62 i.The report lists two lectures, on October 8 and 15. The lecture on atomic structure was likely the one delivered on the 15th.Cambridge University Reporter, 7 October 1936, p. 141The lecture took place in the lecture room of the Physiological Laboratory. discussing the result of an experiment in 1909 where alpha particles were scattered backwards when fired at a thin sheet of metal foil, which led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. The full lecture was reprinted in Background to Modern Science: Ten Lectures at Cambridge arranged by the History of Science Committee 1936., 1936

"...Rutherford never spent more than £2500 a year on his research programme. He resisted suggestions that an industrial appeal might provide him with more money and he did not believe in the economic significance of any of the work he was doing. He used to boast that ‘we have no money, so we shall have to think’."

As written by Lord Bowden (worked under Rutherford c. 1931); in "Effects of World War II on education in science", Bowden 1975, 1931

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. … The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

"The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity" in Philosophical Magazine (September 1902), 1902

That which is not measurable is not science. — also attributed to Lord Kelvin