Sunday, December 04, 2005

Quote from a Nobel laureate

I am a big fan of quotes from Nobel Prize awardees.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
-- Richard Feynman, Letter to Koichi Mano

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The comment is very logical and meaningful. I just wanted to share a little view of mine. I am not against Nobel prize or the winners. But I guess that the community discriminates the prize winners from other scientists. Most Nobel laureates are very intelligent and hardworking. But the other scientists are equally intelligent and hardworking. But the Nobel goes to only few projects and questions which a committee deems important to society or advancement of science. Also, many times, such projects happen to be chosen by chance or the outcome was serendipitous. So, scientists who don't win the Nobel are no less noble or worthy of a prize than the ones that win it. just my two cents

gt said...

I completely agree with your point of discovery by chance. Nobel Prize is only a way of recognizing scientists. Not everybody is in pursuit of Nobel Prize. On the same note, I would like to mention about research in pure science. This is a kind of research which is done not because of any commercial application, but with a sole purpose of extending one’s knowledge in the Laws of Nature. JJ Thompson explains this elaborately with the way x-rays were discovered.

Check the article In defence of pure research for more information.