Your suggestion is thought provoking and will certainly stimulate the discussion on the nature of these objects.

- Oct 19, 1973 comment by the late Dr. Bengt Edlen, recipient of the 1968 Henry Draper Medal

I find it extremely interesting and think that you are the first to produce experimental evidence of the theoretial considerations that I proposed a couple of years ago about laser action in the Optical Region. It sounds very convincing to me.

- Oct 30, 1973 comment by the late Dr. Donald H. Menzel, Director of Harvard Observatory from 1954 to 1966.

There is at least one well known physicist, in fact Dr. Varshni, who remains unconvinced that the redshifts are really present, and interprets these lines as various elements at rest. This changes the whole picture and Dr. Varshni is at one end of a spectrum of argument associated with these questions. If there are no redshifts, this is another way of saying that we don't really know much about the Universe outside our own galaxy and the immediate vicinity. So, it is a somewhat radical approach and you really have to go back 50 or 60 years (1920s) and start rethinking a lot of questions. But while while I'm not sure that I would go that far, with Dr. Varshni, I must tell you that extragalactic astronomy is really in the form of an inverted pyramid, with a small number of facts at the base on which a large superstructure has been created, some of this superstructure may indeed fall down ...

- 1983, comment by Geoffrey Burbidge, Director of Kitt Peak National Observatory from 1978 to 1984.
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