Maxwell

An experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a scientific experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.

James Clerk Maxwell, 1876

Entropy

You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.

Suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty function, as quoted in Scientific American Vol. 225 No. 3, (1971), p. 180.

Qian Xuesen

“An engineering science aims to organize the design principles used in engineering practice into a discipline and thus to exhibit the similarities between different areas of engineering practice and to emphasize the power of fundamental concepts. In short, an engineering science is predominated by theoretical analysis and very often uses the tool of advanced mathematics.”

Qian Xuesen (in English Hsue-Shen Tsien or H.S. Tsien)

Qian Xuesen

“I do not plan to come back. I have no reason to come back. I plan to do my best to help the Chinese people build up the nation to where they can live with dignity and happiness.”

Qian (1955) to reporters after returning to China.

Cited in: “Qian Xuesen dies at 98; rocket scientist helped establish Jet Propulsion Laboratory” Obituary Nov 1, 2009

John von Neumann

“If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o’ clock, I say why not one o’ clock?”

John von Neumann

As quoted in “The Passing of a Great Mind” by Clay Blair, Jr., in LIFE Magazine (25 February 1957), p. 96

Theodore von Karman

Introduction to Compressible Flow

“We call the speed range just below and just above the sonic speed – Mach number nearly equal to one – the transonic range. Hugh Dryden and I invented the word transonic. We had found that a word was needed to denote the critical speed range of which we were talking. We could not agree whether it should be written with one s or two. Dryden was logical and wanted two s’s. I thought it wasn’t necessary and always to be logical in aeronautics, so I wrote it with one s. I introduced the term in this form in a report to the Air Force. I am not sure whether the general who read it knew what it meant, but his answer contained the word, so it seemed to be officially accepted. I well remember this period (1941) when designers were rather frantic because of the unexpected difficulties of transonic flight. They thought the troubles indicated a failure in aerodynamic theory.” Theodore von Karman at Cornell in lecture, 1953.

John von Neumann

“Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.”

Reply, according to Dr. Felix T. Smith of Stanford Research Institute, to a physicist friend who had said “I’m afraid I don’t understand the method of characteristics,” as quoted in The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (1979) by Gary Zukav, Bantam Books, p. 208, footnote.

Dr. von Karman

“Everyone knows it takes a woman nine months to have a baby. But you Americans think if you get nine women pregnant, you can have a baby in a month.,”

November 1957 – Told to Joseph G. Martin, then Aide-de-Camp to Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Hooks, as Lt. Martin escorted Dr. von Karman from New York City to lead a secret symposium on space flight in Cloudcroft, NM. Sputnik had been launched a month before and every branch of the US military had a separate space program and were desperately trying to get off a successful launch.