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Sir Martin Rees (23 Jun 1942 - ) English cosmologist and astrophysicist who became Astronomer Royal in 1995. He studied the distribution of quasars, which he proposed drew their power from huge black holes. Short biography of Sir Martin Rees >>

Martin Rees - Context of quote “The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess”

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“The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are.”

— Martin Rees

From BBC radio interview transcript published in A Passion For Science.

More Martin Rees quotes on science >>

This quote by Martin Rees appears in a collection of editted transcripts from a series of programmes broadcast on BBC Radio 3, in which Lewis Wolpert interviewed scientists from diverse fields. Each spoke vividly on their personal view of science, why they became scientists, and the rewards they found in their research. In their conversations, each scientist described their scientific work in a way easily understandable for the general listener.

Martin Rees outlined the activities of a physicist thus:

The physicist is like someone who’s watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that’s an inexhaustible one I'm sure.

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Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: 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) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)

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