Skip to main content

Fatherhood Quote by Richard Ernst

"My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city"

About this Quote

A small family detail, delivered with the calm precision of a lab note, quietly declares an origin story: Richard Ernst is placing pedagogy and design at the root of his scientific identity. The line is almost aggressively unadorned. No sentimental fog, no dramatic backstory. That restraint is doing work. It frames education not as inspiration but as infrastructure - something built, transmitted, and maintained.

“Teaching as an architect” is the hinge. Architecture suggests disciplined imagination: you don’t get to daydream without math, and you don’t get to calculate without a vision of what the structure must become. For a scientist best known for advancing NMR spectroscopy, that’s a telling inheritance. NMR is, in its own way, architectural: it turns invisible molecular behavior into legible forms. Ernst’s phrasing hints at a household where rigor and representation were everyday habits, where the idea of making the unseen usable wasn’t exotic.

The “technical high school of our city” adds a civic, almost European modernist texture. This isn’t an elite salon or a mythic academy; it’s the pragmatic institution tasked with producing builders, engineers, and competent minds. Ernst’s subtext is modest but pointed: his formation is tied to public knowledge and applied skill, not genius mythology. By naming his father fully - “Robert Ernst” - he also signals a respect for lineage and accountability, the sense that achievement is scaffolded by other people’s labor. The sentence reads like a quiet thesis about how scientific excellence often starts as a local, teachable craft.

Quote Details

TopicFather
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Ernst, Richard. (2026, January 15). My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-robert-ernst-was-teaching-as-an-157076/

Chicago Style
Ernst, Richard. "My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-robert-ernst-was-teaching-as-an-157076/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-robert-ernst-was-teaching-as-an-157076/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Richard Add to List
My father Robert Ernst taught architecture at our citys technical high school
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Switzerland Flag

Richard Ernst (August 14, 1933 - June 4, 2021) was a Scientist from Switzerland.

12 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes