Val Logsdon Fitch

Val Logsdon Fitch (March 10, 1923 – February 5, 2015) was an American nuclear physicist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics with James Cronin for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons.

Quotes

 * But mainly I learned, in approaching the measurement of new phenomena, not just to consider using existing apparatus but to allow the mind to wander freely and invent new ways of doing the job.
 * Nobel Prize Autobiography, from Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1980, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, (Nobel Foundation), Stockholm (1981).


 * At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.
 * Nobel Prize Autobiography (1981).