Martin Lewis Perl quotes

Martin Lewis Perl was an American physicist renowned for his discovery of the tau lepton, a fundamental particle. This breakthrough significantly expanded the understanding of particle physics and the Standard Model. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work. Here are 24 of his quotes:

Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere.

Martin Lewis Perl

You may turn a bad idea into a good idea - don't kill the bad idea prematurely. A bad idea can evolve into a good idea.

Martin Lewis Perl

Their educations ended with high school - my father going to work as a clerk and then salesman in a company dealing in printing and stationary, and my mother working as a secretary and then bookkeeper in a firm of wool merchants.

Martin Lewis Perl

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.

Martin Lewis Perl

I was also interested in chemistry, but my parents were not willing to buy me a chemistry set.

Martin Lewis Perl

My parents regarded school teachers as higher beings, as did many immigrants.

Martin Lewis Perl

The best colleagues are those who will think about your ideas, who will talk with you and offer insight, constructive criticism. No one needs to be crushed for having a new idea.

Martin Lewis Perl

It is always a good plan for a speculative experimenter to have two experiments going, or at least one going and one being built.

Martin Lewis Perl

Common elements of creativity are originality and imagination. Creativity is intertwined with the freedom to design, to invent and to dream. In engineering and science a creative idea is useful only if it meets three conditions: the constraint of the natural laws, the constraint of cost, and the constraint of technical feasibility.

Martin Lewis Perl

I always look for colleagues who are smart, and who know a lot in many fields. The obvious advantage is that he or she may be able to solve the problem that has produced trouble in your work. Also smart and knowledgeable colleagues can save you time, and are interesting and inspiring!

Martin Lewis Perl

Imagination and obsession are the keys to getting a good idea. To help your imagination keep your eyes and ears open. Avoid the "not invented here prejudice."

Martin Lewis Perl

Natures' curriculum cannot be changed.

Martin Lewis Perl

Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

Martin Lewis Perl

About 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia.

Martin Lewis Perl

There were two free public libraries within walking distance of my home; I remember taking six books home from every visit, the limit set by the library.

Martin Lewis Perl

A parent being called to the school because their child had misbehaved was as serious as a parent being called to the police station because their child had robbed a bank.

Martin Lewis Perl

They wanted me to play more sports because they were acutely sensitive to their children being one hundred percent American, and they believed that all Americans played sports and loved sports.

Martin Lewis Perl

It was good fortune to be a child during the Depression years and a youth during the war years.

Martin Lewis Perl

The remoteness of my parents from the schools, so unfashionable today, was often painful for me, but I learned early to deal with an outside and sometimes hard world.

Martin Lewis Perl

I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

Martin Lewis Perl

Whatever the course, whether the course was boring or interesting to me, whether I was talented in mathematics or not talented in languages, my parents expected A's.

Martin Lewis Perl