Top 4 Quotes by Emilio G. Segre

In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable

In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.

Emilio G. Segre

Political, Matter, Lasts

If some nuclear properties of the heavy elements had been a little different from what they turned out to be, it might have been impossible to build a bomb.

Emilio G. Segre

Might, Different, Nuclear

"Enrico Fermi: Physicist". Book by Emilio G. Segre (p. 149), 1970.

In an enterprise such as the building of the atomic bomb the difference between ideas, hopes, suggestions and theoretical calculations, and solid numbers based on measurement, is paramount. All the committees, the politicking and the plans would have come to naught if a few unpredictable nuclear cross sections had been different from what they are by a factor of two.

Emilio G. Segre

Ideas, Two, Differences

Epigraph by Emilio G. Segre in Richard Rhodes' book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (p. 8), 1986.