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Niels Bohr
(7 Oct 1885 - 18 Nov 1962)
Danish physicist.
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Science Quotes by Niels Bohr (16)
Contraria sunt complementa.
Opposites are complementary.
Opposites are complementary.
— Niels Bohr
Motif on Niels Bohr's coat of arms.
See also: | Aphorism (10)
A visitor to Niels Bohr's country cottage, noticing a horseshoe hanging on the wall, teasing the eminent scientist about this ancient superstition. 'Can it be true that you, of all people, believe it will bring you luck?'
'Of course not,' replied Bohr, 'but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.'
'Of course not,' replied Bohr, 'but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.'
— Niels Bohr
As described in Clifton Fadiman (ed.), André Bernard (ed.), Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes (2000), 68.
Anyone who is not shocked by the quantum theory has not understood it.
— Niels Bohr
Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (1958). Quoted in Eric Middleton, The New Flatlanders (2007), 19.
But, but, but ... if anybody says he can think about quantum theory without getting giddy it merely shows that he hasn't understood the first thing about it!
— Niels Bohr
Quoted in Otto R. Frisch, What Little I Remember (1979), 95.
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
— Niels Bohr
Quoted in R. Moore, Niels Bohr, the Man and the Scientist (1967), 140.
If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.
— Niels Bohr
Comment made to Professor Erik Riidinger, 1962. Quotation supplied and translated by Professor Erik Rüdinger, Niels Bohr Archive.
See also: | Aphorism (10)
One thought [spectra are] marvellous, but it is not possible to make progress there. Just as if you have the wing of a butterfly then certainly it is very regular with the colors and so on, but nobody thought one could get the basis of biology from the coloring of the wing of a butterfly.
— Niels Bohr
Quoted from Interviews (I, 7) in 'The Genesis of the Bohr Atom', J.L. Heilbron and T.S. Kuhn, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (1969), 257, reprinted in J. L. Heilbron, Historical Studies in the Theory of Atomic Structure (1981), 195.
Predictions can be very difficult—especially about the future.
— Niels Bohr
Quoted in H. Rosovsky, The University: An Owners Manual (1991), 147. It is said that Bohr used to quote this saying to illustrate the differences between Danish and Swedish humour. Bohr always attributed the saying to Robert Storm Petersen (1882-1949), a well-known Danish artist and writer. However, the saying did NOT originate from Petersen. It may have been said in the Danish Parliament between 1935 and 1939 [Information supplied courtesy of Professor Erik Rüdinger, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen].
The existence of life must be considered as an elementary fact that can not be explained, but must be taken as a starting point in biology, in a similar way as the quantum of action, which appears as an irrational element from the point of view of classical mechanical physics, taken together with the existence of elementary particles, forms the foundation of atomic physics. The asserted impossibility of a physical or chemical explanation of the function peculiar to life would in this sense be analogous to the insufficiency of the mechanical analysis for the understanding of the stability of atoms.
— Niels Bohr
'Light and Life', Nature, 1933, 131, 458.
See also: | Atom (81) | Atomic Physics (3) | Biology (39) | Classical Physics (2) | Life (146) | Quantum (2)
The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.
— Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr, 'Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics', in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949), 240.
See also: | Truth (232)
The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms.
— Niels Bohr
'The structure of the atom', Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1922. In Nobel Lectures: Physics 1922-1941 (1998), 5.
What is that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.
— Niels Bohr
Quoted in Aage Petersen, 'The Philosophy of Niels Bohr', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1963, 19, 10.
When asked ... [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, 'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.'
— Niels Bohr
As quoted in Aage Petersen, 'The Philosophy of Niels Bohr', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1963, 19, 12. Note: Bohr's remark, although in quotation marks, should not be regarded as a direct quote in these exact words. It is a generalised statement in the article author's words to represent Bohr's viewpoint. This is explained in a footnote in Michael Frayn, The Human Touch (2007), 431 based on an article by N. David Mermin in Physics Today (Feb 2004).
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
— Niels Bohr
Quoted in K. C. Cole, 'On Imagining the Unseeable', Discover, 1982, 3, 70.
When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
— Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr, 'Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics', in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949), 236.
See also: | Life (146)
You must come to Copenhagen to work with us. We like people who can actually perform thought experiments!
— Niels Bohr
Said to Otto Frisch. Quoted in Otto R. Frisch, What Little I Remember (1979), 76.
Quotes by others about Niels Bohr (7)
When Bohr is about everything is somehow different. Even the dullest gets a fit of brilliancy.
Isidor I. Rabi in Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists (1978), 201.
But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model—the Bohr model atom—because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom.
Messenger Lectures (1934), New Pathways in Science (1935), 34.
At the beginning of this debate Stephen [Hawking] said that he thinks that he is a positivist, whereas I am a Platonist. I am happy with him being a positivist, but I think that the crucial point here is, rather, that I am a realist. Also, if one compares this debate with the famous debate of Bohr and Einstein, some seventy years ago, I should think that Stephen plays the role of Bohr, whereas I play Einstein's role! For Einstein argued that there should exist something like a real world, not necessarily represented by a wave function, whereas Bohr stressed that the wave function doesn't describe a 'real' microworld but only 'knowledge' that is useful for making predictions.
Debate at the Isaac Newton Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University (1994), transcribed in Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (1996), 134.
We [Frisch and Lise Meitner] walked up and down in the snow, I on skis and she on foot (she said and proved that she could get along just as fast that way), and gradually the idea took shape that this was no chipping or cracking of the nucleus but rather a process to be explained by Bohr's idea that the nucleus was like a liquid drop; such a drop might elongate and divide itself.
Otto Frisch and John A. Wheeler, 'The Discovery of Fission', Physics Today, Nov 1967, 20, 47.
See also: | Nucleus (9)
You can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, but the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr.
About his time working with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen.
About his time working with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen.
Quoted in Dennis Overbye, 'John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term Black Hole, Is Dead at 96', New York Times (14 Apr 2008).
People were pretty well spellbound by what Bohr said… While I was very much impressed by [him], his arguments were mainly of a qualitative nature, and I was not able to really pinpoint the facts behind them. What I wanted was statements which could be expressed in terms of equations, and Bohr's work very seldom provided such statements. I am really not sure how much later my work was influenced by these lectures of Bohr's... He certainly did not have a direct influence because he did not stimulate one to think of new equations.
Recalling the occasion in May 1925 (a year before receiving his Ph.D.) when he met Niels Bohr who was in Cambridge to give a talk on the fundamental difficulties of the quantum theory.
Recalling the occasion in May 1925 (a year before receiving his Ph.D.) when he met Niels Bohr who was in Cambridge to give a talk on the fundamental difficulties of the quantum theory.
In History of Twentieth Century Physics (1977), 109. In A. Pais, 'Playing With Equations, the Dirac Way'. Behram N. Kursunoglu (Ed.) and Eugene Paul Wigner (Ed.), Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990), 94.
I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking.
Recalling his Sep 1926-Feb 1927 stay in Copenhagen.
Recalling his Sep 1926-Feb 1927 stay in Copenhagen.
In History of Twentieth Century Physics (1977), 109. In A. Pais, 'Playing With Equations, the Dirac Way'. Behram N. Kursunoglu (Ed.) and Eugene Paul Wigner (Ed.), Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990), 94.
See also: | Biography (148)
