Ernest Rutherford

The atom is not a simple thing, it is a world unto itself.

We haven't the money, so we've got to think.

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

I have broken the machine and touched the ghost of matter.

When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all—except life.

The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don't.

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.

Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking.

It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden, violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors.

The atom is a very beautiful system... It is like a miniature solar system.

I have just been having a lot of fun being a bricklayer and a carpenter all in one.

The structure of the atom has been solved, and that is why I am here.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continuously produced.

The radiation from uranium compounds can be divided into two distinct types...

The life of a scientist is, as a rule, a simple one.

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1.

I have dealt with many different transformations with various periods of time, but the quickest that I have met was my own transformation in one moment from a physicist to a chemist.

The atom is the smallest unit of an element that can take part in a chemical change.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants, but we must look forward, not down.

The alpha particle is a helium atom, or, to be more precise, the alpha particle, after it has lost its positive charge, is a helium atom.