Members in the Media

Physicists love to nitpick, so for the 100 in the 10 million people who might watch the show, I try to get it as close to 100% accurate as I can. But if I try to suggest a funny line, there are all sorts of reasons it doesn’t work.”
David Saltzberg, UCLA, consultant for the CBS TV show The Big Bang Theory, USA Today, November 5, 2007

“He played baseball and played it well. He didn’t have a Russian accent. He spoke fluent English, American English. His credentials were perfect.”
Stewart Bloom, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, on Soviet spy George Koval, New York Times, November 12, 2007

“This discovery allows us to grasp complex food systems, providing new food science insights for enhancing the physical and functional attributes of food such as flavour, texture and nutrient delivery.”
Raffaele Mezzenga, Nestlé Research Center, on a model that could help explain the texture and transport of flavors and nutrients in foods, Food navigator.com, November 12, 2007

“What many people don’t realize is how easy conservation is.”
Arthur Rosenfeld, California Energy Commission, on energy conservation, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, November 18, 2007

“MIT used to be an ivory tower, like the Forbidden City in China.”
Walter Lewin, MIT, on OpenCourseWare, which makes MIT course materials available online to anyone, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 18, 2007

“People always think that Einstein proved relativity was right. It was a very good concept that he had. Ingenious. But it needs to be verified.”
Gerald Gwinner, University of Manitoba, on a test of Einstein’s theory of special relativity, The Ottawa Citizen, November 12, 2007

“The women started coming up to us, holding their babies, and said, ‘Please help us build a school.’ I was just amazed that in this remote village with no electricity, no plumbing, no toilets, they were talking about education. . . . I was overwhelmed by their courage and their ability to think in the long term.”
Alan Lightman, MIT, on building a dormitory for Cambodian university women, Boston Globe, Nov.,19, 2007

“In some ways, the most exciting stuff in space will be happening on the ground.”
Wendy Freedman, Carnegie Institution, on next generation telescopes, Boston Globe, November 5, 2007

“We found even tiny fragments of double helix DNA can spontaneously self-assemble into columns that contain many molecules. Our vision is that from the collection of ancient molecules, short RNA pieces or some structurally related precursor emerged as the molecular fragments most capable of condensing into liquid crystal droplets, selectively developing into long molecules.”
Noel Clark, University of Colorado, United Press International, November 26, 2007

“You must put yourself in the brain of the bird. We might be surprised, but animals have many types of senses that we just don't share.”
Klaus Schulten, University of Illinois, on how birds sense magnetic fields, Chicago Tribune, November 25, 2007

“This device could make discoveries that are Earth-shattering. We have an opportunity now to do some worthwhile fundamental science on the ISS, and they're resolutely turning their back on it.”
Steven Weinberg, University of Texas at Austin, on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, Washington Post, December 2, 2007

“It’s like rebuilding your car with pieces and after you think you've put it together, there's a giant piece still sitting on the curb, and it's about the size of the car itself.”
 Adam Riess, Johns Hopkins University, on dark energy, Baltimore Sun, December 2, 2007

“If you have a fixed amount in a grant, and you have to spend it all on helium, you don't have anything left over.”
Reem Jaafar, City University of New York, on helium shortages, Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2007

“We saw these two scientists, one wearing a porkpie hat and one wearing a fedora, and they had the euphemisms of being ‘Mr. Smith’ and ‘Mr. Jones.’ It took us less than an hour to recognize in our physics books that one was Oppenheimer, the great theoretical physicist of our age, and the other was E.O. Lawrence, the great shaker of the nuclear project. We, of course, knew then that they were taking over the school to make a nuclear bomb.”
Stirling Colgate, The Albuquerque Tribune, November 30, 2007