George Gamow

“When, in school, they were teaching algebra, I was studying differential equations at home.”

“I learned Einstein's theory of relativity when I was still in school. I simply got interested.”

“If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine!”

“My mother was the only girl in the family. One brother was District Attorney of Odessa or something; another was teaching classical languages; another was a captain of a battleship of the Black Navy; and still another was a chemist and icthyologist.”

“It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!”

“All kinds of physical considerations become senseless when we try to apply them to distances smaller than 10 -13 centimeter.”

“My father was a teacher of the Russian language and literature in high school.”