“… one can still say that quantum mechanics is the key to understanding magnetism. When one enters the first room with this key there are unexpected rooms beyond, but it is always the master key that unlocks each door.”
Quantum Mechanics, The Key to Understanding Magnetism, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1977/vleck-lecture.pdf (December 8, 1977)
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John Hasbrouck Van Vleck 1
American physicist 1899–1980Related quotes
“If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside.”
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Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)
Context: The Key! it is of wonderful construction, with its infinity of combination, and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock. … it is the great master-key which unlocks every door of knowledge and without which no discovery which deserves the name — which is law, and not isolated fact — has been or ever can be made. Fascinated by its symmetry the geometer may at times have been too exclusively engrossed with his science, forgetful of its applications; he may have exalted it into his idol and worshipped it; he may have degraded it into his toy... when he should have been hard at work with it, using it for the benefit of mankind and the glory of his Creator.
“Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.”
The Rubaiyat (1120)
Context: The Vine had struck a fibre: which about
If clings my being — let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
