Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand British physicist, 1871 1937), the 1908 Nobel Laureate who discovered the existence of atomic nuclei, is famously quoted as having said: Physics is the only real science. All the rest is butter?y collecting. Or something to that e?ect. I like to include this quote in my introductory remarks at the ?rst class meetings of the physics courses I teach. I have seen that there are those whointerpret this as a put-down of amateurs (butter?y collectors) in science. However, my own interp- tation of Rutherford s statement is that he is claiming that, except for physics,...

Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand British physicist, 1871 1937), the 1908 Nobel Laureate who discovered the existence of atomic nuclei, is famously quoted as having said: Physics is the only real science. All the rest is butter?y collecting. Or something to that e?ect. I like to include this quote in my introductory remarks at the ?rst class meetings of the physics courses I teach. I have seen that there are those whointerpret this as a put-down of amateurs (butter?y collectors) in science. However, my own interp- tation of Rutherford s statement is that he is claiming that, except for physics,...