John Charles Polanyi
John Charles Polanyi
John Charles Polanyi, PC CC FRSC OOnt FRSis a Hungarian-Canadian chemist who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his research in chemical kinetics. Polanyi was educated at the University of Manchester, and did postdoctoral research at the National Research Council in Canada and Princeton University in New Jersey. Polanyi's first academic appointment was at the University of Toronto, and he remains there as of 2014. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Polanyi has received numerous other awards, including...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 January 1929
CountryCanada
Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.
A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]
Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.
For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.
Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.
Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
Idealism is the highest form of reason.
Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.
Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.
Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.
Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.
Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.