It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist

John Malone

Description

Did you know. . .

. . . that the woman who discovered the largest and most complete T. rex fossil on record was a high-school dropout who became one of the world's greatest fossil hunters? . . . that the great British scientist Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith and had very little formal education? . . . that Gregor Mendel had time to study inherited traits in garden peas because he failed the test to qualify as a high school science teacher?

This is just a small sampling of the many surprises you'll find in this enlightening survey of the mavericks, misfits, and unschooled investigators who have been responsible for some of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist explains the achievements of each of these accomplished amateurs, describes how they approached their investigations, and discusses the impact of their discoveries. In these amazing and inspiring stories, you'll learn about:
* Grote Reber and the birth of radio astronomy
* Arthur C. Clarke's vision of communication satellites
* Joseph Priestley and the discovery of oxygen
* Felix d'Herelle's pinpointing of bacteriophages, killers of bacteria
* Thomas Jefferson and the science of archaeology


You'll also discover which fields of science still offer great opportunities for modern amateurs eager to make a name for themselves. After all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist!
Introduction.

Chapter 1. The Fathers of Genetics (Gregor Johann Mendel).

Chapter 2. Comet Hunter (David H. Levy).

Chapter 3. Cepheid Star Decoder (Henrietta Swan Leavitt).

Chapter 4. Discoverer of Oxygen (Joseph Priestley).

Chapter 5. Electromagnetic Lawgiver (Michael Faraday).

Chapter 6. Father of Radio Astronomy (Grote Reber).

Chapter 7. Communications Satellite Visionary (Arthur C. Clarke).

Chapter 8. First Modern Archaeologist (Thomas Jefferson).

Chapter 9. Dinosaur Hunter (Susan Hendrickson).

Chapter 10. Bacteriophages Discoverer (Felix d'Herelle).

Index.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Physics
• Grote Reber
• Gregor Mendel
• Michael Faraday
• Science
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470356609
• Langue: English

Extrait

IT DOESN T TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST
IT DOESN T TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST
Great Amateurs of Science
John Malone
Copyright 2002 by John Malone. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
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ISBN 0-471-41431-X
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to the memory of Paul Baldwin.
CONTENTS
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Gregor Johann Mendel The Father of Genetics
CHAPTER 2
David H. Levy Comet Hunter
CHAPTER 3
Henrietta Swan Leavitt Cepheid Star Decoder
CHAPTER 4
Joseph Priestley Discoverer of Oxygen
CHAPTER 5
Michael Faraday Electromagnetic Lawgiver
CHAPTER 6
Grote Reber Father of Radio Astronomy
CHAPTER 7
Arthur C. Clarke Communications Satellite Visionary
CHAPTER 8
Thomas Jefferson First Modern Archaeologist
CHAPTER 9
Susan Hendrickson Dinosaur Hunter
CHAPTER 10
Felix d Herelle Bacteriophages Discoverer
Index
INTRODUCTION
Amateur is a word whose meaning can shift according to context. In sports, for example, it is used to designate a person who competes just for the love of it, without getting paid. Olympic figure skaters originally were not allowed to earn any money from competing or performing in non-Olympic years, but that distinction was almost completely eroded during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Actors, on the other hand, are divided into amateur and professional categories on the basis of whether or not they belong to a union, a requirement for working professionally, but even an amateur actor can earn a living by performing only at summer theaters and dinner theaters that do not have union contracts. In the world of science, however, people are regarded as amateurs because they have not been professionally trained in a given discipline at an academic institution. If you do not have a degree, and usually an advanced degree, establishment scientists will regard you as an amateur.
In the modern world, you can still be regarded as an amateur in one scientific discipline even though you ve won a Nobel Prize in another. A case in point is Luis Alvarez, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on elementary particles. Ten years later, he joined forces with his son Walter, a geologist, to postulate the theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs had been caused by a massive asteroid colliding with Earth. Many scientists initially scoffed at this theory, and the fact that Luis Alvarez was working in a field for which he had not been formally trained increased the level of skepticism. The theory was eventually accepted, on the basis of scientific evidence concerning high iridium levels in the geological strata at the presumed time of impact, 65 million years ago, as well as the discovery of an immense undersea crater off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Despite the annoyance Alvarez created among geologists and astronomers by meddling in their disciplines, however, he cannot be considered an amateur scientist in the sense that the main subjects of this book are. You will meet him here, briefly, in a surprising context, but the main subject of that chapter is Arthur C. Clarke, now one of the most famous of all science fiction writers, but then a young man without a college degree serving in the radar division of the Royal Air Force. Clarke wrote a short technical paper in 1945 that drew on several fields in which he had educated himself. Ignored at the time, the ideas set forth in that paper would eventually lead to a communications revolution. Clarke did go on to get a college degree after the war, but when he wrote this paper he was unquestionably an amateur. That was one reason why it was dismissed as science fiction by the few professionals who read it at the time.
Such dismissal is a common theme for the remarkable men and women whose stories are told in this book. Their ideas were ahead of their time, and they came from individuals who had no credentials. In some cases, it is difficult to fault the professionals for failing to see the importance of such work. Who, in the 1860s, would have expected that an obscure monk, who could not pass the tests necessary for certification as a high school teacher, would be able to lay the foundations of a scientific discipline that would become one of the most important of the next century? But that is what Gregor Mendel achieved, planting generations of peas in a monastery garden, and analyzing the results in a way that would provide the basis for the science of genetics.
Mendel, of course, is now studied in high school and college biology courses. So is Michael Faraday, whose work on electromagnetism and electrolysis was crucial to a wide range of later scientific breakthroughs. Yet the drama of Faraday s extraordinary rise from uneducated London paperboy to the pinnacle of nineteenth-century British science is far less known than it should be. Others you will meet in this book are still little known to the general public. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, for example, one of several women known as computers who sorted astronomical plates at the Harvard College Observatory at the turn of the twentieth century, made a discovery about Cepheid stars that led to Edwin Hubble s proof that there were untold numbers of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Sitting at a desk in a crowded room, she provided a fundamental clue to the vastness of the universe. Grote Reber explored the universe from his own backyard in Wheaton, Illinois, where he built the first radio telescope in the 1930s. A self-taught French-Canadian bacteriologist, Felix d Herelle, discovered and named bacteriophages in 1917 and set in motion the lines of inquiry that would lead directly to the revelation of the structure of DNA.
Some readers may be surprised to see the name of Thomas Jefferson here. Yet quite aside from his enormous political influence and architectural accomplishments, Jefferson was very much an amateur scientist. In his spare time he managed to carry out the first scientific archaeological excavation, using methods that are now standard in the field. Like Joseph Priestley, the dissident British clergyman who discovered oxygen, Jefferson s curiosity about the world led him in unexpected directions. Indeed, all the amateur scientists in this book share a great intellectual curiosity. What are those fumes from the brewery next door? What are those clear spots that keep showing up in cultures of bacteria? How could television signals be sent around the world? Does the static emanating from space mean anything? Curiosity is the hallmark of the amateur scientist. Professional scientists are curious, too, of course, but they have been trained to channel their curiosity in particular ways. In the history of science, the curiosity of amateurs has often been more diffuse, even wayward, but it sometimes produces results that leave the professionals in awe, and at other times provides the basis for an altogether new scientific discipline.
The very word scientist is relatively new. Until the end of the eighteenth century, people who investigated what things were made of and how things worked were called natural philosophers. Prior to the nineteenth century, most scientists were in a sense amateurs, although some were far more educated than others. During the twentieth century, the scientific disciplines became so sophisticated that most of them left little room for amateurism. No one can expect to develop new theories involving quantum physics without a great deal of professional training. Yet there are still a few areas in which amateur scientists can make a name for themselves. You will find the stories of two such individuals here: David Levy, the famous comet hunter, and Susan Hendrickson, a woman of immense curiosity who learned an entirely new discipline and discovered the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever found. David Levy graduated from college, but never took an astronomy course. Susan Hendrickson never even attended college. Amateurs can st