Professor
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Nuclear
Theory
Group
Department of Physics
University of Washington
P.O. Box 351560
Seattle, WA 98195-1560, USA
TEACHING
My interest in science is to simply find out about the
world.
. . . When we go to investigate it,
we shouldn't pre-decide what it is we're trying to do, except
to try to find out more about it. . . .
Altogether, I can't believe these special stories that have been
made up about our relationship
to the universe at large because they seem to me too simple,
too connected, too local, too
provincial. . . . I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not
knowing. I think it's much more
interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might
be wrong.
I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth. James Langer
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. Wolfgang Pauli
When you can measure what you are speaking about and
express
it
in numbers,
you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot
express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and
unsatisfactory
kind. Lord Kelvin
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. Winston Churchill
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while other subjects merely require scholarship. Robert Heinlein
I'm a strong believer that ignorance is important in science. If you know too much, you start seeing why things won't work. That's why it's important to change your field to collect more ignorance. Sydney Brenner
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that amateurs built the Ark and professionals built the Titanic. Dave Barry
Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress - in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution.
Generation Terrorists - The Quotations Page - Aphorisms Galore, there are so many there, but don't miss these however. - Yogi BerraPeter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem,
pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and
die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A. Heinlein, The
Notebook
of Lazarus Long
arXiv.org
- APS
eprint - PACS -
Elsevier
UW
Libraries - Physics-Astronomy
Library - Library
Service
Databases- Electronic
Journals - BookHound.com
UW
Computing - CPC - Netlib - lapack - MathWorks
GALLERY
My
main working tool.