The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It takes a certain amount of courage to tackle very hard problems in science, I now realise. You don't know what the timescale of your work will be: decades or only a few years.
When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong.
Although scientists can often be as resistant to new ideas as anyone, the process of science ensures that, over time, good ideas and theories prevail.
In big science, the role of the individual scientist must be carefully preserved. So is the one of original ideas and of contributions.
In particular, for younger researchers on whom the future of mankind may depend. We believe that they are working with all the scientific wisdom at their disposal for the preservation of the inheritance of the earth and for the lasting survival of mankind.
Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importance of the work they do.
Science is a self-sufficient activity.
It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.
There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.