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Edward Mills Purcell
(30 Aug 1912 - 7 Mar 1997)
American physicist.
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Science Quotes by Edward Mills Purcell (2 quotes)
I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep—great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth’s magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.
— Edward Mills Purcell
Opening remark, Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1952).
The Mean Value Theorem is the midwife of calculus—not very important or glamorous by itself, but often helping to deliver other theorems that are of major significance.
— Edward Mills Purcell
With co-author D. Varberg in Calculus with Analytic Geometry (1984), 191.
See also:
- 30 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Purcell'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) -- 
