Are we making more mistakes now? I don't think so. Science is a high-risk activity. And when you do science—this is very important incidentally for t… - Leon M. Lederman

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Are we making more mistakes now? I don't think so. Science is a high-risk activity. And when you do science—this is very important incidentally for the general public, and for policy makers—if you are not wasting some of your money, you are not doing good science. It's a funny way to say this. You've got to back high-risk opportunities. And high-risk opportunities means some fraction of them are going to fail. And I think in any science funding scenario, you've got to say, 10, 20, maybe even 30% of your funds are going to be invested in failures.

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About Leon M. Lederman

Leon Max Lederman (15 July 1922 in New York - October 3 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.

Also Known As

Native Name: Leon Max Lederman
Alternative Names: Leon Lederman Léon Lederman
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Additional quotes by Leon M. Lederman

A time traveler from the year 1899 would be continually amazed by our advanced technology—our cars and airplanes, our skyscraper cities, our TV, radio, computers, and communication abilities. Probably the traveler would be most shaken by our science, from astronomy to zoology. The only place in which this visitor would be comfortably at home is in most of our high schools.

Science is not about status quo. It’s about revolution.

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That's the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat, you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it's fear. Is it right? And it's incredible humor. 'How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid, not to see this?'

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