In the Dark

Here I am in the Departure Lounge of Dublin Airport’s Terminal 2 ready for a quick trip to Poundland. To fill in a few minutes before my flight I thought I’d post this video of the press conference held at Princeton University upon the announcement of the award of a Nobel Prize to Jim Peebles. It’s full of interesting things but I particularly liked this quote:

My advice is not to aim for prizes and awards. They will come or they won’t. Don’t judge your career by their number, by the count of prizes. We’re in this for the joy of research, the fascination, the love of science. That is the reward really…

Don’t judge yourself by the awards. Judge yourself by how well you have done, and do your best.

For me that sums up the whole reason for being a physicist. Even those of us who have no chance of winning awards or prizes and whose achievements are at most modest can still feel the joy and the love of science. That is the reward.

This entry was posted on October 10, 2019 at 8:36 am and is filed under The Universe and Stuff with tags Jim Peebles, Nobel Prize for Physics 2019, Princeton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.