Ernest Rutherford

If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, it is probably not very good physics.

[Science may be divided into either one of] physics and stamp-collecting.

[ Responding to the statement, “Lucky fellow Rutherford, always on the crest of the wave” :] Well, I made the wave, didn’t I?

From the results so far obtained it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-range atoms arising from collision of *3 particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen atoms but probably atoms of hydrogen, or atoms of mass 2. If this be the case, we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated under the intense forces developed in a close collision with a swift *3 particle, and that the hydrogen atom which is liberated formed a constituent part of the nitrogen nucleus.

In order to explain these and other results, it is necessary to assume that the electrified particle passes through an intense electric field within the atom. The scattering of the electrified particles is considered for a type of atom which consists of a central electric charge concentrated at a point and surrounded by a uniform spherical distribution of opposite electricity equal in amount.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. . . . The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it. That should convince you that the atom will always be a sink of energy and never a reservoir of energy.

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

We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think!

in Bulletin of the Institute of Physics (1962) vol. 13 (as recalled by R. V. Jones)

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.

on the back-scattering effect of metal foil on alpha-particles

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

Norman T. J. Bailey The Mathematical Approach to Biology and Medicine (1967)

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

J. B. Birks Rutherford at Manchester (1962)

Ernest Rutherford

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