Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie CurieRead
In 1903, I finished my doctor's thesis and obtained the degree. At the end of the same year, the Nobel prize was awarded jointly to Becquerel, my husband and me for the discovery of radioactivity and new radioactive elements.
Interpretation
Marie Curie reflects on her achievements, including her doctorate and the Nobel Prize for groundbreaking work in radioactivity.
In this quote, Marie Curie recounts two significant milestones in her life: the completion of her doctoral thesis and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for her pioneering research in radioactivity. Her journey highlights the intersection of perseverance, dedication to scientific inquiry, and the recognition that comes from making impactful contributions to knowledge, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated field.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about the importance of academic achievements.
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.
The sensitive plate, the gas which is ionised, the fluorescent screen, are in reality receivers, into another kind of energy, chemical energy, ionic energy... luminous energy.
During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.
Certein bodies... become luminous when heated. Their luminosity disappears after some time, but the capacity of becoming luminous afresh through heat is restored to them by the action of a spark, and also by the action of radium.
But it will be found... that one universal law prevails in all these phenomena. Where two portions of the same light arrive in the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the appearance or disappearance of various colours is determined by the greater or less difference in the lengths of the paths.
These slender little people (Homo Habilis), the size of modern 12 year olds, were devoid of fangs and claws and almost certainly slower on foot than the four legged animals around them. They could have succeeded in their new way of life only by relying on tools and sophisticated cooperative behavior
Einstein, stop telling God what to do!
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.