A Quote by Robert Watson-Watt

There is a great deal of emotional satisfaction in the elegant demonstration, in the elegant ordering of facts into theories, and in the still more satisfactory, still more emotionally exciting discovery that the theory is not quite right and has to be worked over again, very much as any other work of art-a painting, a sculpture has to be worked over in the interests of aesthetic perfection. So there is no scientist who is not to some extent worthy of being described as artist or poet.
Elegance is necessarily unnatural, only achieveable at great expense. If you just do something, it won't be elegant, but if you do it and then see what might be more elegant, and do it again, you might, after an unknown number of iterations, get something that is very elegant.
I wrote a great deal... but very little of any importance; there are not more than four of five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.
I wrote a great deal during the next ten [early] years,but very little of any importance; there are not more than four or five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.
One of the things I am grateful for is that I was able to make contact again with Khun Vichai and work with him again. I still have an awful lot of admiration, warmth and respect for how he worked. I still feel that connection to the people I worked with at Leicester.
Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd.
It is important to notice that these badly functioning designs were praised for 'elegance.' But elegance as theoretical scientists apply it is quite different. The elegance of a mathematical formula is that it explains a phenomenon beautifully, with no parts left over. In design, elegance is more readily perceived as a property of product than of process. If we had more elegant theories, we might look to design for more than elegance.
I used to go to the gym with one of my best friends, and we seemed to have the same conversation over and over again. I was always saying, 'I'm still not pregnant, and I still haven't worked out what I'm writing,' and her answer to both was always, 'Just relax!'
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.
If we stay together, I'll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you're still in this, you'll have to forgive me over and over again too. So forgiveness isn't the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not
I always wanted to be a scientist. I don't really have any writer friends. The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary. I think that all research scientists think of themselves as belonging to a grand tradition, building on work that has been worked on since the very beginning of science itself. Whereas I'm not sure writers think of themselves in the same way.
Science for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it-and I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting.
I would still work with Mel Gibson! He's talented, man! Come on, he came up with 'Apocalypto,' man! I want to work with this guy. I've worked with Steven Seagal. He's out of his mind. I mean, I've worked with Spike Lee for four films. I've worked with some people that you can say are right there teetering between genius and madness.
Scientific theories need reconstruction every now and then. If they didn't need reconstruction they would be facts, not theories. The more facts we know, the less radical become the changes in our theories. Hence they are becoming more and more constant. But take the theory of gravitation; it has not been changed in four hundred years.
I connect fashion to other peoples' elegance, but not my own. I don't think I've ever felt elegant. I've felt appropriate, but never elegant, and I wonder what that must be like. I like it when other people are elegant - I prefer it - but I can't do it myself. I honestly think it's some form of autistic disorder.
I'm quite happy with the body of work that I've done, and I've done some really good work over the years that I'm proud of. I'm proud of some of the people that I've worked with, been lucky to have worked with.
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