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Sir Henry Tizard
(23 Aug 1885 - 9 Oct 1959)
English chemist, inventor and administrator whose work on aircraft fuels also laid the groundwork for the octane rating system. He was a scientific advisor to the British government and during WWII was a liason with American scientists for the war effort. The resulting cooperation contributed to victory in the Battle of Britain.
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Science Quotes by Sir Henry Tizard (4 quotes)
[As Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Ministry of Defence] We persist in regarding ourselves as a Great Power, capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation. Let us take warning from the fate of the Great Powers of the past and not burst ourselves with pride (see Aesop’s fable of the frog). (1949)
— Sir Henry Tizard
As quoted by Peter Hennessy, Whitehall (1989), 155.
Andrade [who was looking after wartime inventions] is like an inverted Micawber, waiting for something to turn down.
— Sir Henry Tizard
As quoted by C.P. Snow in his Lectures at Harvard University (1960), in which he spoke extensively about Henry Tizard. Collected in print as Science and Government (1960), 6. Snow gave this quote to exemplify what he called Tizard's “lively satirical tongue,” but Tizard probably did not originate the epigram. The article 'A Spectator's Notebook' The Spectator (21 Dec 1944), 4, states it was coined by Philip Guedalla, “unless, indeed, which is unlikely, it goes back farther still.” As early as during the first World War, Guedalla “applied it to the Inventions Board under Lord Fisher, sitting in an office in Cockspur Street, and ‘waiting like a kind of inverted Mr. Micawber, for something to turn down.’” Webmaster assumes Tizard's quote refers to Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, also a wartime science consultant.
The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.
— Sir Henry Tizard
As quoted in the Inaugural Sir Henry Tizard Memorial Lecture at Westminster School (21 Feb 1963) by Sir George Thomson 'Research in Theory and Practice'. As cited Ray Corrigan, Digital Decision Making: Back to the Future (2007), 142.
Towards the end of his life, he [Ernest Rutherford] said, “I’ve just finished reading some of my early papers, and you know, when I’d finished I said to myself, ‘Rutherford, my boy, you used to be a damned clever fellow.’”
— Sir Henry Tizard
As quoted in 'The Rutherford Memorial Lecture' (29 Mar 1939), Memorial Lectures Delivered Before the Chemical Society (1951), Vol. 4, 183. Although quoted without source, note that Tizard and Rutherford were friends.
Quotes by others about Sir Henry Tizard (1)
There is a story which shows his ready wit, dating from the meeting of the British Association in Canada before the war. Tizard and a colleague inadvertently crossed over into the United States, near Niagara. When challenged by a policeman, and not having their passports with them, they produced their British Association membership cards. When the policeman told them that “The American Government doesn't recognise British Science,” the lightning reply came from Tizard, “Oh, that's all right, neither does the British Government.”
In Studies of War, Nuclear and Conventional (1962), 119.
See also:
- 23 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Tizard'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) -- 
