Misattributed to Kelvin since the 1980s, either without citation or stating that it was made in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900. There is no evidence that Kelvin said this, and the quote is instead a paraphrase of Albert A. Michelson, who in 1894 stated: "… it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established … An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." The attribution to Kelvin giving an address in 1900 is presumably a confusion with his “Two clouds” speech, delivered to the Royal Society in 1900 (see above), and which on the contrary pointed out areas that would subsequently see revolutions.
Misattributed
Source: Superstring: A theory of everything? (1988) by Paul Davies and Julian Brown
Source: Rebuilding the Matrix : Science and Faith in the 21st Century (2003) by Denis Alexander
Source: Einstein (2007) by Walter Isaacson, page 575
Source: The End of Science (1996), by , p. 19 https://books.google.com/books?id=S1Lmqh79dOoC&pg=PA19
“The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.”
Initial statement of the Uncertainty principle in "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik" in Zeitschrift für Physik, 43 (1927)
Variant translation: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
As quoted in "The Uncertainty Principle" at the American Institute of Physics http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm
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Werner Heisenberg 42
German theoretical physicist 1901–1976Related quotes
“The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.”
The Crafty Art of Playwriting (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 3.
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Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses
1790s
"Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists" (1981); published in Quantum Gravity (1981) edited by Christopher Isham, Roger Penrose and Dennis William Sciama, p. 611 - 637
“Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.”
Source: The Black Cauldron