Ivar Giaever Quotes

Norway, Physicist
April 5, 1929

Ivar Giaever is a Norwegian-American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids". Giaever's share of the prize was specifically for his "experimental discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in superconductors". Giaever is a professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, and the president of the company Applied Biophysics.

While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics.

Ivar Giaever
There are just two things you can do to win a Nobel prize - have a good idea and pursue it effectively.

Ivar Giaever
- Idea
- Pursue
- Nobel Prize

If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.

Ivar Giaever
I would say that, basically, global warming is a non-problem.

Ivar Giaever
- Problem
- Global
- Warming
If you want to help Africa, you should help them out of poverty, not try to build solar cells and windmills.

Ivar Giaever
- Help
- Poverty
- Africa
There are 15 main theories in physics, and we know all of them. If there weren't a finite number of theories, there would not be a point to physics.

Ivar Giaever
- Point
- Physics
- Theories
Understanding truth is the primary objective of science, not doing good for the world.

Ivar Giaever
- World
- Truth
- Science
Science is to find something unknown, while invention is to make something new out of the known theory.

Ivar Giaever
- Science
- Theory
- Invention

'Incontrovertible' is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science.

Ivar Giaever
- Science
- Word
- Scientific
If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.

Ivar Giaever
- Theory
- Agree
- Experiment
You need to be curious, competitive, creative, stubborn, self-confident, skeptical, patient and be lucky to win a Nobel.

Ivar Giaever
- Win
- Creative
- Patient