Quote Origin: In Physics, Almost Everything Is Already Discovered, and All That Remains Is to Fill a Few Unimportant Holes – Quote Investigator®
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Philipp von Jolly? Max Planck? George Gamow? Neil de Grasse Tyson? Richard Feynman? Ian Stewart? Apocryphal?
Depiction of a plasma ball from Hal Gatewood at Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: According to legend, a talented student asked a prominent physicist about the future of his field, and the response was thoroughly discouraging:
Almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.
Reportedly, the student was Max Planck who eventually became a Nobel-prize- winning quantum physicist. Would you please explore the authenticity of this anecdote? Who was the pessimistic physicist?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1924 Max Planck was a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Berlin in Germany. He delivered a guest lecture at the University of Munich. Planck recounted his experience as a student when he approached experimental physicist Philipp von Jolly to learn more about his future career. The conversation with Jolly occurred sometime between 1874 when Planck began his studies and 1879 when he defended his PhD thesis. The following passage in German is followed by an English rendering. Boldface added to excerpts by QI: 1
Als ich meine physikalischen Studien begann und bei meinem ehrwürdigen Lehrer Philipp v Jolly wegen der Bedingungen und Aussichten meines Studiums mir Rat erholte, schilderte mir dieser die Physik als eine hochentwickelte, nahezu voll ausgereifte Wissenschaft, die nunmehr, nachdem ihr durch die Entdeckung des Prinzips der Erhaltung der Energie gewissermaßen die Krone aufgesetzt sei, wohl bald ihre endgültige stabile Form angenommen haben würde. Wohl gäbe es vielleicht in einem oder dem anderen Winkel noch ein Stäubchen oder ein Bläschen zu prüfen und einzuordnen, aber das System als Ganzes stehe ziemlich gesichert da, und die theoretische Physik nähere sich merklich demjenigen Grade der Vollendung, wie ihn etwa die Geometrie schon seit Jahrhunderten besitze.
When I began my studies in physics and sought the advice of my esteemed teacher, Philipp von Jolly, regarding the conditions and prospects of my studies, he described physics to me as a highly developed, nearly fully mature science —one which, now that the discovery of the principle of the conservation of energy had, as it were, placed the crown upon it, would likely soon assume its final, stable form. While there might perhaps remain a speck of dust or a bubble here or there to be examined and classified, the system as a whole stood quite secure, and theoretical physics was perceptibly approaching that degree of perfection which, for instance, geometry had already possessed for centuries.
QI believes that the short quotation under examination was not spoken by Philipp von Jolly or Max Planck; instead, the modern quotation was created by an unknown person as a paraphrase of the passage above.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1958 physicist and science communicator George Gamow published "Matter, Earth, and Sky". Gamow wrote a thematically similar statement. He suggested that the field of cosmology had largely reached maturity:2
In the study of the universe, we have expanded our knowledge to a limit beyond which nothing basically new has been found. Even the 200-inch telescope of the Palomar Mountain Observatory permits us to see only more of the same galaxies that were seen through the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson, and a 300-inch, 400-inch, etc. telescope will most probably see just more of the same.
Thus, it seems that we now have a rather complete general picture of the universe around us — both of the vast expanses of the macrocosm and of the vanishingly small structures of the microcosm. Using our analogy with geography, we could say that America has been discovered, Magellans have sailed around the world, and the contours of the land and oceans have been roughly plotted on maps.
In 1965 a series of lectures by physicist Richard Feynman were published under the title "The Character of Physical Law". Feynman offered the following elegiac passage about discovering the fundamental laws of nature:3
We are very lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries. It is like the discovery of America — you only discover it once. The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature, and that day will never come again. It is very exciting, it is marvellous, but this excitement will have to go.
In 1969 Alan E. Nourse M.D. published "Universe, Earth, and Atom: The Story of Physics". Nourse stated that some scientists believed that major problems in physics would remain unsolved:4
Not all physicists are quite so sanguine about the future of their work. Many feel that a major break point has been reached in...