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Nicolaas Bloembergen
(11 Mar 1920 - )
Dutch-American physicist who developed three-level pumps used in both masers and lasers. He made pioneering use of lasers to investigate the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter.
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Science Quotes by Nicolaas Bloembergen (3 quotes)
After the German occupation of Holland in May 1940, the [last] two dark years of the war I spent hiding indoors from the Nazis, eating tulip bulbs to fill the stomach and reading Kramers' book “Quantum Theorie des Elektrons und der Strahlung” by the light of a storm lamp.
— Nicolaas Bloembergen
As was the case for Nobel's own invention of dynamite, the uses that are made of increased knowledge can serve both beneficial and potentially harmful ends. Increased knowledge clearly implies increased responsibility. We reject the notion advocated in some quarters that man should stop eating from the tree of knowledge, as if that were humanly possible.
— Nicolaas Bloembergen
From Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1981), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel 1981 (1981), 44.
I am ever more intrigued by the correspondence between mathematics and physical facts. The adaptability of mathematics to the description of physical phenomena is uncanny.
— Nicolaas Bloembergen
From Nobel Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1981), in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel 1981 (1981), 59.
See also:
- 11 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Bloembergen's birth.
- Encounters in Nonlinear Optics: Selected Papers of Nicolaas Bloembergen, by Nicolaas Bloembergen. - book suggestion.
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) -- 
