Peter Debye quotes

“Mathematical physics is in the first place physics and it could not exist without experimental investigations.”
-- Peter Debye

Source : Inaugural lecture for his professorship of mathematical physics at the University of Utrecht, 1913.

#Firsts Quotes #Physics Quotes #Investigation Quotes

“If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.”
-- Peter Debye

#Science Quotes #Problem Quotes #Interest Quotes

“I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.”

“That's already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong.”

Source : Twitter post from Apr 25, 2013

“The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.”

Source : "Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas". Book by Abby Sunderland and Lynn Vincent, 2011.

“Politics is more difficult than physics.”

“Well, I'm leaning probably toward the sciences like physics.”

“There are very few things that can be proved rigorously in condensed matter physics.”

“To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic - like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.”

“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.”

“Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.”

Source : Athenaeus (1854). “The Deipnosophists Or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus: With an Appendix of Poetical Fragments, Rendered Into English Verse by Various Authors and a General Index : in Three Volumes”, p.439

“No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.”