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Max von Laue
(9 Oct 1879 - 23 Apr 1960)
German physicist whose discovery of X-ray diffraction in crystals earned him the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physics. His experiment proved that X-rays are waves, and that crystals have a regular atomic lattice capable of diffracting them.
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Science Quotes by Max von Laue (2 quotes)
Whatever may happen to the latest theory of Dr. Einstein, his treatise represents a mathematical effort of overwhelming proportions. It is the more remarkable since Einstein is primarily a physicist and only incidentally a mathematician. He came to mathematics rather of necessity than by predilection, and yet he has here developed mathematical formulae and calculations springing from a colossal knowledge.
— Max von Laue
In 'Marvels at Einstein For His Mathematics', New York Times (4 Feb 1929), 3.
With crystals we are in a situation similar to an attempt to investigate an optical grating merely from the spectra it produces... But a knowledge of the positions and intensities of the spectra does not suffice for the determination of the structure. The phases with which the diffracted waves vibrate relative to one another enter in an essential way. To determine a crystal structure on the atomic scale, one must know the phase differences between the different interference spots on the photographic plate, and this task may certainly prove to be rather difficult.
— Max von Laue
Physikalische Zeitschrift (1913), 14. Translated in Walter Moore, Schrödinger. Life and Thought (1989), 73.
Quotes by others about Max von Laue (1)
The great physicist von Laue said … a pendulum clock is not the Box you buy in a shop; a pendulum clock is the box you buy in a shop together with the Earth.
From Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory (1967), 12.
See also:
- 9 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Laue's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
