Mark Oliphant Quotes & Sayings

I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them. — Mark Oliphant

Going after the unknown is always fascinating, I think. It becomes part of your life, this desire to know. — Mark Oliphant

I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use. — Mark Oliphant

I lost my hair mixing a substance called white gunpowder on the kitchen table. — Mark Oliphant

I worked with him for ten years until he died and it was the most wonderful time of my life. — Mark Oliphant

It was essential to do this job, hateful though it was, because we knew the Germans were hot on the trail. — Mark Oliphant