Members in the Media

“He would pull one rabbit out of the hat, and another, and then suddenly the rabbits would arrange themselves in a pattern and start dancing in a way you’d never seen before.”
Peter Freund, University of Chicago, Illinois, after the death of Yoichiro Nambu, who studied broken symmetry, The New York Times, July 17, 2015.

“It would be incredibly naive of me to think that there aren’t people who rely on my blog for a bit of help.”
John Eric Goff, Lynchburg College, Virginia, who has used physics to accurately predict the outcome of the Tour de France bicycle race, The Washington Post, July 25, 2015.

“The scientist in me rebels against that. We should start with the technical facts of the agreement, and then proceed to a very complicated diplomatic and psychological judgment call of what the world looks like if Congress does vote this agreement down.”
Bill Foster, Democratic congressman from Illinois, on partisanship surrounding the proposed U.S. nuclear agreement with Iran, realclearpolitics.com, July 27, 2015.

“We really had the prejudice that pentaquarks were fakes and that nobody would believe it.”
Sheldon Stone, Syracuse University, New York, collaborator on the recent discovery of two kinds of five-quark objects, insidescience.org, August 10, 2015.

“[The program is] losing patience with those of us who want to understand the fundamentals.”
Robert Austin, Princeton University, on the direction of a physical science oncology program of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (he was not funded), Nature, August 5, 2015.

“He’ll be able to speak, you just wouldn’t be able to hear him, and if you could hear him you wouldn’t be able to stop laughing.”
James Kakalios, University of Minnesota, on what physics says about the changes to the main character in the movie “Ant-Man,” fivethirtyeight.com, July 17, 2015.

“He knew I was a loudmouthed New Yorker. … He said, ‘Here’s your chance to get back to New York.’”
Benjamin Bederson, former editor in chief of the APS, on his commanding officer in the army telling him about the Manhattan Project, The New York Times, July 26, 2015.

“Encouragement is always useful, but it’s not necessarily the rate-limiting step.”
Mildred Dresselhaus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the fact that her thesis advisor didn’t think that women should be in science, arstechnica.com, July 30, 2015.

“You don’t have to ask me. … You can ask any of the more than 30 scientific societies in the U.S. — the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society.  I could go on and on.”
Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University, when asked whether global warming is settled science, “Real Time With Bill Maher” broadcast on HBO, August 7, 2015.

“What we try to do is ... keep the administration’s claims and the claims of others a little bit more honest.”
John Gibbons, former head of the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, who passed away on July 17, in a 1989 interview, The Washington Post, July 30, 2015.