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Stay on Your Side of the Line

Feb 20, 2009

Stephen Quake is back doing a guest post at Olivia Judson's blog, this time focusing on the "artificial divisions" between pure and applied research. Over the years, he says, there have been many examples of researchers, from Archimedes and Lord Kelvin no less, who made both fundamental scientific discoveries and applied ones. "The stereotyped view is that the applied scientists control the lion’s share of funding, while the basic scientists control the most prestigious journals and prizes. The reality is more complicated and lies somewhere in between," Quake writes.

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