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Albert Claude,
(24 Aug 1898 - 22 May 1983)
Belgian-American cytologist who was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.
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Science Quotes by Albert Claude, (8 quotes)
I remember vividly my student days, spending hours at the light microscope, turning endlessly the micrometric screw, and gazing at the blurred boundary which concealed the mysterious ground substance where the secret mechanisms of cell life might be found.
— Albert Claude,
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
I told him that for a modern scientist, practicing experimental research, the least that could be said, is that we do not know. But I felt that such a negative answer was only part of the truth. I told him that in this universe in which we live, unbounded in space, infinite in stored energy and, who knows, unlimited in time, the adequate and positive answer, according to my belief, is that this universe may, also, possess infinite potentialities.
— Albert Claude,
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
If we examine the accomplishments of man in his most advanced endeavors, in theory and in practice, we find that the cell has done all this long before him, with greater resourcefulness and much greater efficiency.
— Albert Claude,
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
In the long course of cell life on this earth it remained, for our age for our generation, to receive the full ownership of our inheritance. We have entered the cell, the Mansion of our birth, and started the inventory of our acquired wealth.
— Albert Claude,
Talking about the new information revealed by electron microscopy Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
Is it absurd to imagine that our social behavior, from amoeba to man, is also planned and dictated, from stored Information, by the cells? And that the time has come for men to be entrusted with the task, through heroic efforts, of bringing life to other worlds?
— Albert Claude,
From Nobel Prize Lecture (Dec 1974), 'The Coming Age of the Cell'. Collected in Jan Lindsten (ed.) Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971-1980 (1992).
Life, this anti-entropy, ceaselessly reloaded with energy, is a climbing force, toward order amidst chaos, toward light, among the darkness of the indefinite, toward the mystic dream of Love, between the fire which devours itself and the silence of the Cold.
— Albert Claude,
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
Until 1930 or thereabout biologists [using microscopes], in the situation of Astronomers and Astrophysicists, were permitted to see the objects of their interest, but not to touch them; the cell was as distant from us, as the stars and galaxies were from them.
— Albert Claude,
Nobel Lecture, The Coming Age of the Cell, 12 Dec 1974
We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?
— Albert Claude,
From Nobel Prize Lecture (Dec 1974), 'The Coming Age of the Cell'. Collected in Jan Lindsten (ed.) Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971-1980 (1992).
See also:
- 24 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Claude'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) -- 
