Per Bak

Per Bak (December 8, 1948 – October 16, 2002) was a Danish theoretical physicist who coauthored the 1987 academic paper that coined the term "self-organized criticality."

Quotes

  • Perhaps our ultimate understanding of scientific topics is measured in terms of our ability to generate metaphoric pictures of what is going on. Maybe understanding is coming up with metaphoric pictures.
    • Per Bak (1996). How Nature Works: the science of self-organized criticality. Springer. ISBN 0387947914. 
  • History including that of evolution is just "one damned thing after another We can explain in hindsight what has happened but we cannot predict what will happen in the future. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard expressed the same view in his famous phrase "Life is understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.
    • [1], How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality, Chapter 1 (pp. 7-8)
  • You don’t get rich from doing physics but you do get an opportunity to go to all the places the rich would go to if they had the time. [citation needed]
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