Martin Rees Quotes

The launch of iPhone is very possibly bigger than the launch of the first Apple II or the first Mac. Steve Jobs's genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts.

A technological advance of a major sort almost always is overestimated in the short run for its consequences - and underestimated in the long run.

Practically everyone is going to have a general purpose computer in their pocket, it's so easy to underestimate that, that has got to be the really, really big one.

There is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us .... One day man will release and control its almost infinite power.

I absolutely believe that we are on the cusp of not just a technological revolution, but a productivity revolution. It will bring benefits for people everywhere, make our planet more sustainable, and provide new opportunities for businesses of all kinds.

The World Wide Web went from zero to millions of web pages in a few years. Many revolutions look irrelevant just before they change everything swiftly.

There are three great themes in science in the twentieth century : the atom, the computer, and the gene.

Technology changes the medium. I grew up on watching a box in my living room that made my parents happy. After something is gone, the dust will settle and I'll see what's next.

Our focus should be on developmental dimensions of atomic science with a special outreach to India's youth.

Technology giveth and technology taketh away.

The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.

Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.

By an incredible coincidence, Gamow and Edward Condon, who had discovered simultaneously and independently the explanation of radioactivity (one in Russia, the other in this country), came to spend the the last ten years of their lives within a hundred yards of each other in Boulder.

There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom

Now I know what the atom looks like.

I looked for it [heavy hydrogen, deuterium] because I thought it should exist. I didn't know it would have industrial applications or be the basic for the most powerful weapon ever known [the nuclear bomb] ... I thought maybe my discovery might have the practical value of, say, neon in neon signs.

Technology: No Place for Wimps!

From phones to cars to medicine, technology touches every part of our lives. If you can create technology, you can change the world.

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.

The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

There is no more discovery. Not since the beginning of this century. There are new gadgets. New important gadgets.

In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.

The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent and creative imagination. Even when the external and scientific requirements for the birth of an idea have long been there, it generally needs an external stimulus to make it actually happen; man has, so to speak, to stumble right up against the thing before the idea comes.

Science is progressing at such a rapid rate that when you make a prediction and think you are ahead of your time by 100 years you may be ahead of your time by 10 at most.