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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index F > Otto Robert Frisch Quotes

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Otto Robert Frisch
(1 Oct 1904 - 22 Sep 1979)

Austrian-British nuclear physicist.


Science Quotes by Otto Robert Frisch (4 quotes)

Scientists have one thing in common with children: curiosity. To be a good scientist you must have kept this trait of childhood, and perhaps it is not easy to retain just one trait. A scientist has to be curious like a child; perhaps one can understand that there are other childish features he hasn't grown out of.
— Otto Robert Frisch
What Little I Remember (1979), 86.
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Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom; we ask what is likely to be observed—and with what likelihood—when we subject atoms to any specified influences such as light or heat, magnetic fields or electric currents.
— Otto Robert Frisch
What Little I Remember (1979), 20.
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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 Robert Frisch
Otto Frisch and John A. Wheeler, 'The Discovery of Fission', Physics Today, Nov 1967, 20, 47.
Science quotes on:  |  Niels Bohr (55)  |  Divide (77)  |  Down (455)  |  Drop (77)  |  Explain (334)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Idea (881)  |  Liquid (50)  |  Lise Meitner (8)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Process (439)  |  Snow (39)  |  Walk (138)  |  Way (1214)

When anybody contradicted Einstein he thought it over, and if he was found wrong he was delighted, because he felt that he had escaped from an error, and that now he knew better than before.
— Otto Robert Frisch
As quoted in Max F. Perutz, I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity (2002), 312.
Science quotes on:  |  Anybody (42)  |  Better (493)  |  Contradict (42)  |  Delight (111)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Error (339)  |  Escape (85)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wrong (246)



Quotes by others about Otto Robert Frisch (2)

You must come to Copenhagen to work with us. We like people who can actually perform thought experiments!
Said to Otto Frisch. Quoted in Otto R. Frisch, What Little I Remember (1979), 76.
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Ihre Arbeit ist gekrönt worden mit dem Nobel Preis für Otto Hahn.
Her work has been crowned by the Nobel Prize for Otto Hahn.
Anonymous
Said to observe that she did not herself receive recognition of her research.
Science quotes on:  |  Crown (39)  |  Nobel Prize (42)  |  Research (753)  |  Work (1402)


See also:
  • 1 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Frisch's birth.
  • What Little I Remember, by Otto Robert Frisch. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
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