7 Life Lessons From 7 Scientists To Inspire You

Michael Faraday: Faraday was a famous English chemist and physicist who could not finish his schooling due to poverty. As a teenager, Faraday self-taught himself while working at a book binding shop. He discovered the laws of electrolysis and electromagnetic induction.

Faraday's pioneering work inspired the likes of Maxwell, Einstein and Tesla. Faraday shows that hard work and self-belief can take you places. That one must be humble and receptive to understand that knowledge is not limited to school books, knowledge is everywhere.

Marie Curie: Two time Nobel Prize winner Madame Curie is best known for the discovery of Radium. Curie lost her mother and her elder sister when she was only 10 years old. Her paternal home was burned to the ground amid war in Poland.

Yet, Curie's tragic childhood did not stop her from becoming a scientist 20 years later. She told her daughters: “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

Albert Einstein: German born physicist Albert Einstein settled in the United States after becoming an American citizen in 1940. As a university professor, Einstein was deeply disturbed by racism in the education system. He decided not to stay quiet about it, expressing publicly:

“The more I feel American, the more it pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out that racism is America’s greatest disease”. Einstein was always known for challenging the norms. As a 15 year old, Einstein clashed with the authorities at his school as he believed that creative thought was lost in a strict rote learning.

Richard Feynman: Feynman was a Rockstar among physicists. He always jumped into an adventure challenging himself and the authority in question. Once Feynman learned Portuguese just to impress his Brazilian colleagues. He played Bongo drums and performed for students with his friend Ralph Leighton.

Feynman drew pictures of contemporary scientists including Dirac, Bethe and painted flowers in spare time. He always had time for hobbies beside solving the mysteries of physics. Feynman openly criticized NASA exposing the safety risks after the challenger disaster. What do you care what other people think? An attitude that Richard Feynman carried till the end of his life and you should too in your adventures in life.

Stephen Hawking: In life, one must be ever ready to face mental as well as physical challenges. Stephen Hawking was a promising student at the prestigious Cambridge university when he suddenly was diagnosed with the motor neuron disease.

The doctors advised Hawking to put his affairs in order as he had only a few more years to live. Despite all the odds, Hawking went on to complete his PhD couple years later, and also revolutionized physics for next half a century. He wrote several best selling books, starred as himself on many popular shows and experienced zero gravity. Stephen Hawking lived life to the fullest.

Isaac Newton: Newton needs no introduction. As the story goes, his genius was unleashed by the falling of an apple. Newton invented the necessary mathematics to explain the dozens of unexplained natural phenomena. He gave the three laws of motion and did pioneering work in optics.

But it is a misconception that Newton did all the work by himself. For one, Newton could not afford the publication of Principia and took the help of noted astronomer Edmund Halley. Secondly, Newton borrowed the idea for calculus from ancient Greek mathematics. Third, Newton built upon the works of Kepler and Galileo and acknowledged this by saying: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Nikola Tesla: Serbian inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla worked for Edison machine works for over a year. Impressed by Tesla’s ingenuity, Thomas Edison offered to pay a hefty bonus for improving the designs of his DC dynamos, but it turned out to be a joke. Later on, the two inventors would feud over whose electrical system would power the world.

A college dropout who set out to revolutionize how humans consumed electric power, Tesla teaches forgiving and focusing on one’s own work. Work talks. Tesla believed: “The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.” Today, the entire world runs on alternating current electrical systems.

Five Quotes By Steven Weinberg on Religion

Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) was an American physicist who won the physics Nobel Prize in 1979 for his contribution to the unification of electromagnetism and weak force. This is similar to Maxwell unifying electricity and magnetism in the 19th century.

Weinberg was not only famous as a scientist but also for his writings and talks outside of science. He did important work in philosophy, politics and history. Weinberg gave the following four tips to students to succeed in the sciences:

1. You don't have to know everything
2. Specialize in a developing field
3. Don't be afraid to be wrong
4. Read more of science history

It is well known that Weinberg was an outspoken atheist and against organized religion. He once said: (1) With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

In another interview, when asked whether he believed in God, Weinberg replied assertively: (2) If by God you mean a personality who is concerned about human beings, who did all this out of love for human beings, who watches us and who intervenes, then I would have to say in the first place how do you know, what makes you think so?

According to Weinberg: (3) One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, an agnostic by belief, had once said: The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Meaning, one can study the universe and by doing so hope to understand its mysterious workings without having to rely on the supernatural.

Weinberg added to this adage, in one of his books, as he wrote: (4) The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. Weinberg meant, whatever the universe is about, it sure as heck isn’t about us, as claimed by religion.

Steven Weinberg had also warned that the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief. He said: (5) Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.

Weinberg enjoyed an illustrious career from Cornell to Princeton and from Berkeley and Harvard to MIT where he thought of the Nobel worthy idea to unify fundamental forces of nature. He never retired and continued teaching physics and astronomy until his death

Five Quotes By Richard Feynman On Politics

Nobel Prize winning American physicist Richard Feynman, known for pioneering the field of quantum electrodynamics, was more famous for his outspokenness. "I learned from my father: have no respect whatsoever for authority," Feynman once said.

Richard never showed admiration for any politician. Given how individualistic and anti-authoritarian Feynman was, if forced to run for President, it would probably be as an independent. Following are Feynman's views on politics.

Governance:

In 1963, Feynman stated during a lecture: I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, and what I am going to emphasize is only an intellectual thing.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated.

Feynman added: Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression.

According to Richard Feynman, it is the duty of a government to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and development of the human race.

Patriotism:

Feynman played a crucial role on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the 1986 Challenger disaster. He was dying of cancer at the time, but felt it was necessary to use his last productive days on the government project.

Feynman wrote in his report: NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Democracy:

Feynman believed democracy to be a scientific type of government. Only in this system, Feynman declared, new ideas can be developed, tried out and tossed away if necessary, with more ideas brought in  — a trial and error system.

Feynman said: Democracy was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. It was clear to people even then that doubt and discussion were essential to progress.

Deficit:

Feynman joked in 1987: There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it is only a hundred billion. It is less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Elections:

Feynman demonstrated why a scientist can never become the president. Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, "What are you going to do about the farm question?" And he knows right away — bang, bang, bang.

The second campaigner goes: "I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it. And it must be a hard problem...

…So the way I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it."

According to Feynman, the second candidate would not get anywhere in America. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when in most cases, it is the other way around.

Because there is lack of respect for people who are trying to solve problems, such a candidate can get to nowhere. Whereas, the politician can make tall claims and promises and fool people time and time again. The attitude of the populace is to blame, says Feynman.

Summing up:

Richard Feynman favored democratically elected government and likened it to the scientific method. He envisions a system in which doubt and discussion are not frowned upon. As an independent thinker Feynman is against all kinds of authority — religious, political or scientific.

Why Carbon Did Not Form In The Big Bang?

Where did all the chemical elements in the periodic table come from? Physicists theorized that elements can be created inside dying stars and astronomers confirmed this by observation.

Essential elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron are created towards the end of a star’s life cycle. Much heavier and precious elements like Gold are formed in supernova explosions.

Shortly after the big bang, the explosion that birthed the universe, there was 92% hydrogen and 8% helium atoms. Simple elements came into existence quick, obvious, but what about the rest of them?

Why did nature have to wait for early stars' death in hundreds of millions of years time to produce carbon, oxygen, etc.?

Two reasons: One, by the time simple atoms formed, the universe had already cooled enough. Second, there was hardly any disposable helium.

We know, hydrogen has 1 nucleon, a proton, and helium has 2 protons and 2 neutrons, so 4 nucleons. The reactions to yield heavier elements would be:

H + He or He + He

Giving out nuclei with 5 and 8 nucleons respectively, both highly unstable.

For example: The resulting beryllium-8 has half life of only 8.19×10−17 seconds. Stable beryllium has 5 neutrons and 4 protons.

Thus, beryllium-8 would immediately decay into two stable helium nuclei, if ever it came into being.

Besides, hydrogen and helium are themselves incredibly stable. It turns out that nature preferred stability over creation of heavy elements.

Soon, gigantic lumps of hydrogen began forming due to sophisticated engineering by gravity. The lumps were spherical, because again… nature likes stability.

The first stars made light in extreme conditions upon converting hydrogen to helium, because of Einstein's energy mass equivalence.

Towards the end, most hydrogen in the star is converted to helium. There is abundance of helium nuclei to combine with beryllium-8 in just the right time to become carbon-12.

Ultimately, it boils down to the amount of disposable helium, even if the pressure and temperature conditions are met. The collapsing star makes more elements like nitrogen, oxygen, iron and nickel as it dies.

In the big bang, helium was unavailable for extensive use. Whereas, in the star, formation of carbon is possible in the triple alpha process. And since life on earth is carbon based, we are children of the stars.

Three scientists share Nobel Prize in physics for quantum mechanics

Swedish inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel donated 94% of his wealth for the establishment of the Nobel Prize in 1895. He believed that people are capable of helping to improve society through knowledge, science and humanism.

The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901 and has since been given 609 times. In 2022, the Nobel Prize for physics was won by French physicist Alain Aspect, American physicist John Clauser and Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger.

Members of the Nobel committee for physics announced the 2022 winners on Tuesday at 11.45 CEST saying that this year's prize is about the power of quantum mechanics.

The Nobel prize for scientists is similar to the Olympics for athletes and the Oscar for actors. Each recipient of the Nobel Prize receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a monetary award of approximately 1 million USD.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science, the Royal Swedish academy of sciences said.

Quantum mechanics is a mathematical description of the motion and interaction of subatomic particles, incorporating concepts like quantization of energy, wave–particle duality, the uncertainty principle, etc.

Many modern devices such as integrated circuits, MRI, laser, electron microscope, etc. are designed using quantum mechanics. The 2022 physics laureates’ development of experimental tools has laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology.

Physicist John Clauser built an apparatus that emitted two entangled photons. Quantum entanglement or spooky action at a distance, as Einstein famously called it, is the idea that two particles are linked to each other, even if separated by long distances.

Physicist Alain Aspect developed a system capable of switching the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source, so the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result.

Physicist Anton Zeilinger researched the entangled quantum states. His team has demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation in 1997. He also won the inaugural Isaac Newton medal in 2008 for pioneering work in quantum physics.

The trio has paved the way for new technology based upon quantum information. Their contribution will help to construct quantum computers, improve measurements, set up quantum networks and establish secure quantum encrypted communication.

Why Richard Feynman was an avowed atheist

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning American physicist who made fundamental contributions to quantum electrodynamics, a theory which explains the interaction between light and matter.

Feynman was more famous as a beloved teacher whose lectures helped a many graduate and undergraduate students discover their love for physics.

Throughout his life, Feynman was openly against the dogmas of faith. Richard asked difficult and sometimes provocative questions in the search of truth. Once Feynman was interrogated if he preferred being called an agnostic instead?


Feynman replied candidly: Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this. I call myself an atheist.

Despite being an atheist, Feynman would use the following analogy: One way to understand physics is to think that the gods are playing a great game, let's say a chess game, while we observe from the sidelines.

We do not know what the rules are of the game. But if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules are what we mean by fundamental physics.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was born to Lucille Feynman, a homemaker and Melville Feynman, a uniform sales manager. Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families but not religious in the slightest. By youth, Feynman described religion as a culture of faith and science as a culture of doubt. The two were incompatible.

In 1959, Feynman explained why he was an atheist. He said:

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage...

...so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

Feynman always looked forward to science and religion dialogues. He was all for advocating an atheistic worldview. Following is an excerpt from 1964 lecture at Galileo symposium in Italy:

"The remark which I (Feynman) read somewhere, that science is all right as long as it doesn't attack religion. As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from society except for its applications, and thus be isolated."

People love science for its results. While ignoring the process of careful reasoning, persistent questioning and investigating. The lack of courage and curiosity create a people who have no reason to want to know. To this, Feynman adds: I suggest, maybe correctly and perhaps wrongly, that we (scientists) are too polite.

Some people wrongly say, according to Feynman, that the laws of physics are God-like. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. When you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God and you don't need him anymore.

But you need God for the other mysteries, the question of life and death, for instance. God is associated with those things that you do not yet understand. Therefore I (Feynman) don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

If the path of science is that of doubt, uncertainty and not knowing, how can one be clear of one's purpose in life?

Feynman says: Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

There are many things I (Feynman) don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else.

But I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me. Thus, Richard Feynman was a lifelong atheist.