TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Politics is more difficult than physics.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index Y > Chen Ning Yang Quotes

Thumbnail of Chen Ning Yang (source)
Chen Ning Yang
(22 Sep 1922 - )

Chinese-American theoretical physicist who shared (with Tsung–Dao Lee) the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics for the ground-breaking discovery of the violation of parity conservation.


Science Quotes by Chen Ning Yang (4 quotes)

In 1975, ... [speaking with Shiing Shen Chern], I told him I had finally learned ... the beauty of fiber-bundle theory and the profound Chern-Weil theorem. I said I found it amazing that gauge fields are exactly connections on fiber bundles, which the mathematicians developed without reference to the physical world. I added, “this is both thrilling and puzzling, since you mathematicians dreamed up these concepts out of nowhere.” He immediately protested: “No, no. These concepts were not dreamed up. They were natural and real.”
— Chen Ning Yang
In 'Einstein's Impact on Theoretical Physics', collected in Jong-Ping Hsu, Leonard Hsu (eds.), JingShin Theoretical Physics Symposium in Honor of Professor Ta-You Wu (1998), 70. Reprinted from Physics Today (Jun 1980), 49. The article was adapted from a talk given at the Second Marcel Grossman meeting, held in Trieste, Italy (Jul 1979), in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein.
Science quotes on:  |  Amazing (35)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Beauty (313)  |  Both (496)  |  Concept (242)  |  Connection (171)  |  Develop (278)  |  Dream (222)  |  Dreamed Up (2)  |  Fiber (16)  |  Field (378)  |  Immediately (115)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Natural (810)  |  Nowhere (28)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical World (30)  |  Profound (105)  |  Protest (9)  |  Puzzling (8)  |  Real (159)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Theorem (116)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thrill (26)  |  World (1850)

Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.
— Chen Ning Yang
Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1957). In Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1981-1990) (1998), 394-395.
Science quotes on:  |  Advantage (144)  |  Beautiful (271)  |  Complex (202)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Consider (428)  |  Contrast (45)  |  Deep (241)  |  Develop (278)  |  Elegance (40)  |  Fail (191)  |  Involved (90)  |  Law (913)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Never (1089)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Physical (518)  |  Power (771)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Representation (55)  |  Respect (212)  |  Sense (785)  |  Simple (426)  |  Symmetry (44)

One of the most important choices any researcher makes is picking a significant topic to study. If you choose the right problem, you get important results that transform our perception of the underlying structure of the universe. If you don’t choose the right problem, you may work very hard but only get an interesting result.
— Chen Ning Yang
Unverified - source citation needed. Can you help?
Science quotes on:  |  Choice (114)  |  Choose (116)  |  Hard (246)  |  Important (229)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Most (1728)  |  Perception (97)  |  Pick (16)  |  Problem (731)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Result (700)  |  Right (473)  |  Significant (78)  |  Structure (365)  |  Study (701)  |  Topic (23)  |  Transform (74)  |  Underlying (33)  |  Universe (900)  |  Work (1402)

There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read beyond the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page.
— Chen Ning Yang
Attributed, but without reference. For example, in John Mitchinson, John Lloyd, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People? (2009), 31. If you know the primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Book (413)  |  First (1302)  |  Kind (564)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Page (35)  |  Read (308)  |  Sentence (35)  |  Two (936)


See also:
  • 22 Sep - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Yang's birth.

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
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.