We collect here some quotes from great scientists who described in words their experience of beauty in scientific research, so that they may keep inspiring us to always “go beyond” and discover the unexpected in our daily work.

Marie Curie (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911):
“I belong in the ranks of those who have cultivated the beauty that is the distinctive feature of scientific research. A scientist in the laboratory is not just a technician; the scientist confronts the laws of nature as a child confronts the world of fairy tales. We do not have to make people believe that scientific progress can be reduced to a mechanism, to a machine: things which, moreover, have their beauty. I do not believe that the spirit of the scientific enterprise threatens to disappear from our world. If there is something vital in everything that I notice, this is the spirit of adventure which seems inextinguishable and is bound up with curiosity.”

Konrad Lorentz (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973):
“The magnificence and the beauty of this world must indeed be made readily accessible to the young people of today so that they are not left in any doubt about the present position of mankind and so that they are not left to despair… It must somehow still be possible to make comprehensible to such young people that truth, too, is not only beautiful but also full of mind-boggling mystery, that one does not have to take drugs or become a mystic in order to experience the wondrous.
At a time when it has become fashionable to regard science as an essentially value-indifferent undertaking, it is understandable that scientists feel obliged to demand of themselves a value-free attitude toward their research subject or toward the object of their study. I regard this vogue as dangerous, however, because of its self-deception. For example, all of the biologists I know are undeniably lovers of their objects of study, in exactly the same sense that someone whose hobby is aquaria is in love with the objects being cared for.
Every human who can become sentient to and experience joy in creation and its beauty is made immune to any doubt about its meaning… Close acquaintance with the beautiful precludes the erroneous belief … that only what can be exactly defined and quantified is real.”