One day Onsager told him he had decided to try an experiment on the se — Lars Onsager

"They made the mistake there of assigning Onsager to the basic Chemistry I, II course. He just couldnt think at the level of a freshman. Frankly, he was fired. I wont say he was the worlds worst lecturer, but he was certainly in contention. He was difficult to understand anyway, but he also had the habit of lecturing when his back was to the students and he was writing on the blackboard. To compound matters, he was a big man, and students had to peer round him just to try and see what was being written."

"On a new derivation of Birkhoffs strong ergodic hypothesis he once remarked in exasperation: "To be any more immaculate they will have to begin sterilizing the paper as well as the theorem !"

"... he gave a seminar in Oxford about his ideas on liquid helium, but on this occasion even the theorists were baffled. Onsagers final comment in reply to a question was: "The results are not bad when you consider the enormity of the swindle which I have perpetrated!"

"Onsager regarded chess, so he said, as too much like real problem-solving to spend much time on it. When he wanted to unwind from his work he would play solitaire, and bridge was a good relaxation in company."

"... when asked by Longworth how he would explain the electrophoretic effect in "physical terms," he picked up Longsworth, chair and all, and carried him across the room."

"He had been warned that non-theoreticians would be present and that he should phrase his talk in not too technical language. He plunged, nevertheless, into the mathematics of spinor algebras. After about twenty minutes, one of the many experimentalists in the audience had the courage to ask him what a spinor was. Onsager replied, thoughtfully: "A spinor--no, a set of spinors--is a set of matrices isomorphic to the orthogonal group." With that he gave the famous Onsager grin, twinkled his Nordic blue eyes at the bewildered faces around him, and continued the lecture as if nothing had happened."