Heinrich Rohrer

1933–2013 · Swiss physicist

Topics: learning, creativity

• We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.

  — Heinrich Rohrer

• We had the freedom to make mistakes. That's something very important. Unfortunately, this freedom for scientists gets more and more lost. … Otherwise, you do the common things. You don't dare to do something beyond what everybody else thinks.

  — Heinrich Rohrer

• To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant.

  — Heinrich Rohrer

• The coming nanometer age can, therefore, also be called the age of interdisciplinarity.

  — Heinrich Rohrer