“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

— Benjamin W. Lee

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 22, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a …" by Benjamin W. Lee?

Benjamin W. Lee photo

Benjamin W. Lee 1

Korean American physicist 1935–1977

Related quotes

“life is like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to see the whole picture, then put it together piece by piece!”

Terry McMillan book A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Source: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

“The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

“Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 10, Too Many Lawyers, p. 174.

“Music is for me like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Quoted by Jalmari Finne, June 28, 1905. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_16.htm

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“It is as though a puzzle could be put together simply by shaking its pieces.”

Christian de Duve (1917–2013) Belgian biochemist, cytologist

Life Evolving : Molecules, Mind, and Meaning (2002)

“Your hand fits mine like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“The pieces all fit together. Yet everything was falling apart.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation.”

Agatha Christie book Third Girl

Third Girl (1966)

Related topics