There are many statements that are attributed to famous scientists that turn out to be widely wrong. A decade ago I wrote about one from Brian Pippard predicting the end of condensed matter physics in the 1960s.
However, just like Einstein quotes, it turns out that many of these statements in the popular folklore are often wrongly attributed. For example, according to the Wikipedia entry on Lord Kelvin,
The statement "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement" has been widely misattributed to Kelvin since the 1980s, either without citation or stating that it was made in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1900).[86] There is no evidence that Kelvin said this,[87][88] and the quote is instead a paraphrase of Albert A. Michelson, who in 1894 stated: "… it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established … An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."[88]
I love Bill Bryson's book A Brief History of Nearly Everything. I recently read in it that the Surgeon General of the United States of America, William Stewart, said in 1967:
“The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States.”Wow, that sure was wrong. There are now 9 million covid-19 cases and more than 200,000 deaths in the USA. I was going to write a blog post about this. But, then I discovered these two nice articles.
In 2015 an article in the New Yorker
One of Science’s Most Famous Quotes Is False By Michael Specter
A 2013 article in the journal Infectious Diseases of Poverty
On the exoneration of Dr. William H. Stewart: debunking an urban legend
Brad Spellberg and Bonnie Taylor-Blake
Basically, Stewart never said this, nor held this view. In contrast, many of his contemporaries did.
And then there is all the hype about current materials research leading to revolutions in computing, medicine, transportation, commerce, ...
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