Arthur Beer

Arthur Beer (June 28, 1900 – October 20, 1980) was a German astronomer who worked at Cambridge University.

Quotes

• Newton's own motto, "hypotheses non fingo" was, in a sense, disregarded by Newton himself: he rejected hypotheses only where they violated his own "regula philosophandi", that is to say, his principle of their strict parsimony. In terms of present-day methodology, we reject hypotheses as scientifically meaningless if they are incapable even of indirect test; and we reject them as superfluous or as implausible if they are too complex and artificial to conform with well established canons of inductive probability. But freedom of scientific theorizing must be preserved wherever the conditions of meaningfulness and of economy appear to be satisfied.
  • Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1955) Introduction to Vol.1

Quotes about Arthur Beer

• He is an astronomer of 33 years, held in high esteem by all specialists, a Bohemian Jew who... has worked exclusively in Germany at the largest institutes with very good success. This man has now lost, with brutal consequence, all possibilities, even the smallest ones, to earn his living, so now he has become without subsistance, and is literally forced to be a beggar. I have a handful of brilliant testimonies of him and his work. He has a wife and a child [Peter Beer]. ...he can be reached via Dr. Freundlich, Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory.
  • Albert Einstein in letter of 11 June 1933, cited in: Duerbeck, H. W. & Beer, P. (2006). Arthur Beer and his relations with Einstein and the Warburg Institute. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (ISSN 1440-2807), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 93 - 98 (2006). James Cook University, NASA Astrophysics Data System. Retrieved on 6 December 2013.