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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index W > George Wald Quotes > Death

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George Wald
(18 Nov 1906 - 12 Apr 1997)

American biochemist who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the chemistry of vision.


George Wald Quotes on Death (4 quotes)

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Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
— George Wald
In talk, 'Origin of Death' (1970). Evolution began with one-celled organisms reproducing indefinitely by cell division.
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I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that make up ninety-nine per cent of our living substance were cooked in the deep interiors of earlier generations of dying stars. Gathered up from the ends of the universe, over billions of years, eventually they came to form, in part, the substance of our sun, its planets, and ourselves. Three billion years ago, life arose upon the earth. It is the only life in the solar system.
— George Wald
From speech given at an anti-war teach-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (4 Mar 1969) 'A Generation in Search of a Future', as edited by Ron Dorfman for Chicago Journalism Review, (May 1969).
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I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he’d be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.
— George Wald
In talk, 'Origin of Death' (1970). Evolution began with one-celled organisms reproducing indefinitely by cell division.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Attack (86)  |  Cause (561)  |  Certificate (3)  |  Death (406)  |  Event (222)  |  Failure (176)  |  Final (121)  |  Finish (62)  |  Last (425)  |  Life (1870)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Organ (118)  |  Physician (284)  |  Pneumonia (8)  |  Think (1122)  |  Union (52)

Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die; it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.
— George Wald
In talk, 'Origin of Death' (1970).
Science quotes on:  |  Amoeba (21)  |  Become (821)  |  Certain (557)  |  Creature (242)  |  Death (406)  |  Divide (77)  |  Division (67)  |  General (521)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Two (936)


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  • 18 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Wald's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
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