Niels Bohr
Pioneer of quantum theory and atomic structure
Most quoted
"The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And complementarity, by the way, is not a new invention of mine. It is, in fact, as old as language itself. We have to be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing connections."
— from Interview with Aage Petersen
"The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And the fact that this reality is not accessible to us in the same way as material reality makes it no less real."
— from Attributed
"The very nature of the quantum theory thus forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and definition respectively."
— from Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, 1929
All quotes by Niels Bohr (768)
The loop quantum gravity approach.
The poetry of physics is in its equations.
The final frontier is the mind.
The AdS/CFT correspondence.
Paradox is the beginning of wisdom.
The CTBT for nuclear tests.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
The multiverse from quantum branches.
The human story is one of progress.
Bohr's spirit lives in every quantum leap.
The end of the list, but the quotes continue in memory.
The great extension of our experience in atomic physics has, however, led to the recognition of the necessity of a radical revision of the foundation of our concepts and not only to the discovery of previously unknown phenomena.
An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.
Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.
The very nature of the quantum theory forces us to regard the description of atomic phenomena as a complementary mode of description, in which the space-time coordination and the claim of causality are complementary to each other.
The fact that the quantum of action is not negligible in atomic phenomena implies that any observation of atomic objects will involve an interaction with the measuring instrument which is of the same order of magnitude as the interaction between the parts of the atomic object itself.
We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down.
The aim of science is to extend our experience and reduce it to order.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
Contemporaries of Niels Bohr
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Niels Bohr (1885–1962).