Of Science & Scientists

POPULAR SCIENCE
An Anthology of A n e c d o t e s
A.N. KOTHARE
SUDHANSHU S. PALSULE
S.M. PAREKH
M.P. NAVALKAR
Science
OF SCIENCE
AND
SCIENTISTS
A.N. KOTHARE
SUDHANSHU S. PALSULE
S.M. PAREKH
M.P. NAVALKAR
NATIONAL BOOK TRUST, INDIA

ISBN 81-237-0917-X
First Edition 1994 (Saka 1916)

Reprinted 1995 (Saka 1917)
Revised Edition 1997 {Saka 1919)
© A.N. Kothare, 1994
Published by the Director, National Book Trust, India

A-5 Green Park, New Delhi 110 016
Contents
Foreword vii
A cknowledgmen t xi
Preamble xiii
Anecdotes from the Lives of Scientists 1
Appendices
I Outline of Science 215
II Fields of Scientific Knowledge 217
III Science, Scientist and Truth 218
IV Scientific Ideas and Ideals 221
V Humour, Humility and Humanism in Science 223
VI Role of Anecdotes in Value Education 226
Index 231
»
Foreword
As one grows old, one recalls with pleasure incidents

and events not only in one's life, 'the Roses of December',
but in that of others as well. They are mostly, if not
always, intended for entertainment. But Prof. Kothare's
'anecdotes' have a purpose far beyond that of raising a
smile. Their object is to instruct and edify. Prof. Kothare
himself says that they should form part of a value-oriented
education system. Viewed this way, they are analogous
to the fable and the parable. While these two are mostly
imaginary, anecdotes are factual though one cannot vouch
for the truth of each one of them especially when they
are based on hearsay. I am glad to learn that even in his
class-room lectures (as testified by Dr Homi Sethna, former
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), Prof.
Kothare used to explain the theories with appropriate
anecdotes. As a student of physics myself, I can understand
how far anecdotes about scientists go in relieving the
monotony of 'definition, experiment and problems'.
I am a great believer in scientific progress and
appreciate its varied gifts to humanity. If today the world
is described as a 'global village', it is mainly due to the
revolutionary changes brought about in transport and
communications through the technological application of
scientific discoveries. The success of the Green Revolution
in India in the sixties was the result of the adoption of a
package of measures, the most important of which was
technology in the form of high-yielding varieties of seed,
fertilisers and pesticides in a regime of water control and
XV111 OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
management. Scientific education is the sine qua non of

general progress and a scientific temper is indispensable
for sustaining that progress. But, at the same time, the
progress of man within, the spiritual dimension of man,
should not be ignored. "Science without religion is lame,"
said Albert Einstein.
Swami Vivekananda declared: "I do not mean that
those who want to search after truth through external
nature are wrong, nor that those who want to search
after truth through internal nature are higher. These two
are the two modes of procedure. Both of them must live;
both of them must be studied; and in the end we shall
find that they meet."
We are apt to look upon scientists as staunch
monogamists wedded to science alone. They are as human
as most of us, with strengths and weaknesses, failings
and foibles which are common to us all. But they have
their eccentricities as well as noble traits like humility
and sympathy. For instance, Henry Cavendish (1731-1810)
"the richest of all the learned and the most learned of all
the rich", was a misogynist. Madame Curie (1867-1934),
whose father could not pay for her education, agreed to
work as governess till her elder sister completed her
medical education. Einstein could tell the mother of a
child, who had sought his help in doing some homework,
that "I have learned more from the conversation with the
child than she did from me." Charles Darwin (1809-1882),
after a meeting with Prime Minister Gladstone, could
say with humility, "He talked to me as if he were an
ordinary person like myself." Thoma<s Huxley (1825-1895),
a self-proclaimed agnostic, did confess that "love has
opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature "
Apart from these anecdotes, Prof. Kothare has enhanced
the value of his book by essays entitled 'Science, Scientist
and Truth' and 'Humour, Humility and Humanism' among
others. If these essays give the different facets of science,
the anecdotes reveal the personality of the scientists.
FOREWORD IX
Prof. Kothare (87) is a veteran educationist with six

decades of experience as a teacher, research worker and
administrator. His text-books on organic and inorganic
chemistry have been used by generations of students.
Prof. Kothare has been intimately connected with
the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, especially in the activities
of the Bhavan's 'Ancient Insights and Modern Discoveries'
project. The project aims at correlating the ancient thought
enshrined in the Vedas with the fruits of modern scientific
research.
I whole-heartedly commend this book by Prof.
Kothare, Prof. S.M. Parekh, Dr M.P. Navalkar and Prof.
Sudhanshu Palsule to students, teachers and laymen
interested in science, scientists and progress through
science.
C. SUBRAMANIAM
Bombay President
5 Jan. 1994 Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
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Acknowledgment
We, the authors, express our deep sense of gratitude to

Mr S.P. Save (chief librarian of Asiatic Society Library,
Bombay) and Mr V. Sivaramakrishnan, associate editor
of Bhavan's Journal (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan). They helped
us in many ways, especially in editing, getting the
manuscript typed and securing photos of scientists.
To Prof. Ms Saumya Balsari (The International People's
College, Denmark) for her active interest in the preparation
of a part of the manuscript.
To the National Book Trust, India for bearing with
us when delays occurred at different stages before printing.
We are deeply indebted to Mr C. Subramaniam for
his learned foreword. Mr Subramaniam was, till recently,
Governor of Maharashtra and is the president of the
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
As Minister for Agriculture in the Government of
India, in the sixties, he took bold decisions that ultimately
led to the Green Revolution that made the country self-
sufficient in foodgrains. Nobel laureate, Dr Norman
Borlaug, publicly acknowledged that the Green Revolution
became a reality because of the strategy adopted by the
government in popularising new varieties of seeds.
Dr Borlaug went to the extent of saying that the Nobel
Prize should have gone to Mr Subramaniam.
It is a matter of special satisfaction to us that
Mr Subramaniam is a graduate in physics.
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Preamble
The three primary questions that scientists direct towards

their field of investigation are 'what', 'how' and 'why'.
'What' stands for observational questioning, 'how' admits
operational questioning and 'why' finally, brings out
explanatory questioning.
WHAT: Observational questioning requires clarification
of two aspects: scientists and the field of science. The
field of science comprises different spheres—astrosphere,
atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. These
spheres are not isolated or sealed from one another, but
are inter-permeative and interacting. The happenings in
one profoundly affect the actions in the rest. In each sphere
there are certain facts and phenomena, firstly, for
observation and explanation, and secondly, for control
and exploitation. These observational questioning spheres
have been classified by Dr Karl Popper into three worlds:
World 1—the ordinary physical world, or the world of
physical state;*World 2—the mental world or the world
of mental state which may be considered as psychosphere;
and World 3—the world of actual or possible objects of
thought—the world of concepts, ideas, theories, theorems,
arguments and explanations, i.e. of all the faculties of the
mind or the precognitive abilities. The second world of
Karl Popper includes the 'self' or the scientist and his
cognitive abilities for questioning. The third world is the
sphere of thoughts and ideas which is an exo-cognitive
condition. Isaac Newton recognised the third world (when
asked how he had made such great discoveries in his
life, his reply was that he had the privilege to stand on
the shoulders of intellectual giants).

The second facet of 'what' is the scientist himself—
a scientist with a physical body which is the gateway to
physical information. Binet has called the body 'a chest
of tools'. In the process of evolution, Homo erectus (first
man) became Homo sapiens (modern man) and reached a
state of Homofaber (man the maker) and in this evolutionary
process he acquired the mental cognitive abilities (thinking
power) and the 'structurally opposable thumb'. (This phrase
commonly used by eminent sociologists refers to the
structural change in the process of evolution which gives
the human hand the ability to construct or use it for
purposes of experimental work. Animals do not have the
'opposable thumb' or the thumb which opposes the other
fingers). These evolutionary changes were responsible for
man's scientific and technological progress. With his
cognitive abilities he could formulate hypotheses using
the observational data of information. This called for
adoption of an experimental approach either to verify or
to falsify the formulated hypotheses.
Another question pertains to identifying the rich
investigating fields that the scientist chooses for himself.
Broadly it is the synergetic action of cognitive abilities
and affective attitudes. This concept can be brought out
clearly from Einstein's essay on 'My Plans for the Future'
which he wrote as a schoolboy. To quote relevant parts
of this essay: "I imagine myself becoming a professor in
particular branches of natural sciences choosing the
theoretical parts of them. The reason for this is though...the
individual disposition for abstract and mathematical
thought, the lack of fantasy and of practical talent." At
the zenith of his scientific achievements he admitted, "I
am not cut for a tandem (bicycle meant for two)." This
statement brings out the shift from personal choice to
collective obligation represented by team work in scientific
investigations. The team work is today represented by
the establishment of R&D (research and development)
PREAMBLE xxiii
centres in industries and political involvement in mission-

oriented research work as seen in America's Manhattan
Project for development of the atomic bomb.
Team-oriented research has been possible due
primarily to the phenomenal growth of scientific disciplines
and secondly, to sophisticated instrumentation needed
in research. The 'sealing wax and strings' aspect of
laboratories in the historical past has been replaced by
the 'push-button' instrumentation in the present
laboratories and which is contributing towards 'big team
science'. Scientific investigation today has lost its primary
function of 'open book publication' and shifted to patent-
oriented publication.
The mission-oriented research work like the Manhattan
Project imposes on such work the stigma of secrecy.
Dr Oppenheimer, who successfully conducted the
Manhattan Project, was forbidden access to State research
work. In the late 1940s when he as a member of the
Manhattan Project, was made to appear before the Senate
Armed Services Committee and asked, "Doctor, is there
any defence against such a nuclear weapon?" his reply
was in the affirmative.
He was then asked, "What is that, Doctor?"
Dr Oppenheimer replied, "Peace."
J. Rostand, the Kalinga prize-winner of 1959, has
observed in his prize-winning oration: "Laboratores must
open right on the street. All men have the right to receive
the truth and the truth hag the right to reach all men."
HOW: After settling 'observational questioning',
scientists enter into 'operational questioning' by asking
'how' of the problem. In olden times, man's curiosity
with his cognitive abilities helped the unaided eye to
explore the sky and a few segments of the astrosphere.
Thus began the initial study of astronomy by the
Babylonians and Egyptians and subsequently by the
Greeks. The cognitive abilities for this study involved
mathematical concepts such as Euclid's geometry. The
plate on the entry-door of Plato's academy carried the

following notice for eligibility to admission: 'Nobody should
enter the academy who does not know geometry'.
However, working with 'opposable thumb' during
experimental work was considered demeaning for
acquiring elitist status. Experimentation was greatly
frowned upon for it was seen to be unworthy of the lofty
ideals of Greek standards. The story goes that during a
scientific discussion, in one of the academies in Greece,
a young man was asked how many teeth were there in
a horse's mouth. The young man promptly secured a
horse and proceeded to count its teeth. Both he and the
horse were unceremoniously thrown out of the academy.
The unaided-eye observation, which was confined
to the astrosphere, benefitted immensely when
investigations were pursued through the methodology
of experimentation. It is said that science came from the
heavens to the earth on the inclined plane of Galileo. An
experiment is an interaction of the physiological and
psychological apparatus with the physical apparatus being
utilised for the study of a phenomenon. Physiological
and psychological apparatus stand for the scientist while
the physical aspect represents the apparatus—tools,
instruments, machines, models and computers. Leonardo
da Vinci has rightly said, "Theory is the General and
experiments are soldiers."
Physical aids must serve three important functions:
• assist and extend the observer's senses;
• hold the unrequired variable constant; and
• convert a phenomenon not detectable by senses into
perception.
The first aspect of physical aids has great value when
one of the senses, like the eye, has limitations in observation.
These limitations have been overcome by developing
different types of microscopes and highly accurate
telescopes. The microscope helps to bring into focus minute
organisms. Discovered by Levwenvoch, this instrument
PREAMBLE xxiii
has not only the 'magnification' but also the 'resolving'

power. However, even this advanced instrument failed
to bring viruses into the vision. Technologists then
developed the electron microscope which proved beneficial
in the study of viruses and the diseases caused by them.
The observable distance with the unaided eye had to be
extended beyond its field of vision with the help of
telescopes. This instrument underwent technological
developments to result finally in the discovery of the
radio telescope. The sense of touch, as everyone knows,
became a measurable factor with the discovery of a simple
instrument, the clinical thermometer. The heart-beats of
a patient which were earlier examined by the medical
man by putting his ear on the chest of the patient (very
embarrassing in case of a female patient), can now be
conveniently checked with the stethoscope.
In the second aspect of physical aids, scientists while
studying the different facets of a phenomenon basically
want to study only one of them so as to detect any change
in the phenomenon. The study of gases is done with
such apparatus particularly meant for measuring
temperature and how it is related to pressure and volume
of gas.
In the third aspect of physical aids, apparatus and
machines are the prerequisites for studying radioactive
materials. The Geiger-counter brings into focus the decay
of radioactive material otherwise not possible with the
naked eye.
Such precious assistance given by various sophisticated
physical aids in the investigation of phenomena made
Dr Broglie comment, "There is one special form of the
mechanical art in which the machine becomes the servant
of the intellectual curiosity; the form is the experimental
technique which supplies the scientist the necessary
instruments to study nature and discover its laws."
WHY: This question is an important facet of scientific
adventure. 'Why' is explanatory questioning with three
different aspects of scientific adventures. The first

questioning is the summation of the results of the
experimental work and the conclusions drawn from the
same. The second facet is the conclusion so reached and
how much status it has as a scientific truth. The third
aspect is whether such scientific truth stands justified
both in the macro and micro fields of scientific
investigations. The famous nuclear scientist Dr Oho R.
Frisch has written the first chapter of Encyclopaedia of
Ignorance and has entitled it 'WHY'. He gives the different
aspects of 'why' by asking the following questions:
"Why did Jones break his leg?"
"Because his tibia hit the kerb," says the surgeon.
"Because some fool dropped a banana skin on the
road," says Mrs Jones.
"Because he never looks where he goes," says a
colleague.
"Because he subconsciously wanted a holiday," says
a psychiatrist.
These 'whys' the scientist (the medical man) can justify
through X-ray examination; the psychiatrist justifies by
the nascent science of psychology; while the two others
have explained it more by the heart than by the head.
The explanations of 'why' reveal both exposed and hidden
variables.
Dr Oho R. Frisch, for a single event, cites five different
'whys' involving the head and the heart. Scientific
investigation after 'what' and 'how' raises the last crucial
question—'wh/—that needs answering on different levels
of the scientific structure. This can be illustrated by the
experimental work of the great scientist Isaac Newton.
When he passed a ray of light through a prism, it emerged
on the other side in seven different colours (VIBGYOR).
The first 'why' goes back to what happened; the second
'why' is a link with 'how' and answer to the second
question realises the phenomenon 'truthful' to reality.
Newton answered the second question on the basis of
PREAMBLE xxiii
gravitational theory and justified it on the basis of the

corpuscular nature of light. Huygens performing the same
experiment answered the last 'why' of Newton's on the
wave theory of light and this brought in clash of head
and heart. Newton expressed his anguish and blamed
his own prudence for publishing it. He received substantive
support on the 'thought experiment' of Einstein, a genius
of a scientist, who said that if a ray of light has to pass
by the side of a large astral body, it will get attracted and
bent. He explained that the light rays are 'photons'.
Einstein's thought experiment on the bending of light
was proved right to the exact decimal point by Eddington
in his observation of the eclipse. Einstein said, in justification
to his theory, "Now that my theory of relativity has been
proved true, Germany will claim me as a German and
France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Had
my theory proved false, France would have said that I
am a German and Germany would have declared that I
am a Jew." The head and the heart fused together to
explain the final 'why' of the rays of light through the
corpuscle and wave theory of light as proved by the great
scientist Sir W.H. Bragg, who said, "On Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays we use a wave theory of light
and on the other three days, the corpuscle theory of light."
It may be necessary here to cite another example
which stands as a 'breakthrough' in science, in the same
way as above. Breakthroughs are turning points which
upset the previous concepts in science and have been
called 'paradigm-breaking' by Dr T.S. Kuhn. The
'breakthrough' phenomenon not only justifies the new
experimental concept but also contributes towards further
progress of scientific advances and helps to bridge the
different disciplines in scientific investigations. Such events
in the scientific world include Rutherford's discovery of
the nucleus of the atomic structure and Roentgen's
discovery of X-rays. The result of Rutherford's experiment
on the bombardment of gold foil with beams of particles,
drew from him the following observation, "It was quite

the most incredible event that ever happened to me in
my life. It was almost as incredible as if you had fired a
15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back
and hit you." The conclusions of these observations
established the central factor of the atomic structure and
Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, in
chemistry, for 'Investigations into Disintegration of
Elements'. Acknowledging the felicitation for the award
from Otto Hahn (who split the atom), Rutherford wrote:
"I much appreciate your kind congratulations and wishes
on the award...I must confess it was very unexpected
and I am very startled at my metamorphosis into a
chemist." The breakthrough not only altered the concept
of the atom but also changed the physicist into a chemist.
A breakthrough brings about a complete change in
the previously held concept of the phenomenon. Secondly,
it brings about new directions and helpful assistance in
other disciplines. X-ray stands as the best example of
both the factors of breakthrough. The discovery of X-ray
by Roentgen stands as an example of serendipity, i.e.
discovering something other than what you are
experimenting for, as is the case of the scientist who was
working on the passage of electricity through rarefied
gases. During this work his wife stepped into the laboratory
and accidentally put her hand on an unexposed
photographic plate and, thereby for the first time, X-ray
photo of the bones of her hand was recorded. The discovery
of this unique phenomenon of Roentgen rays popularly
known as X-rays, was a breakthrough of the main
experiment that he was conducting. This discovery brought
about stupendous advances in biochemistry, particularly
molecular biochemistry where the discovery of the structure
of the DNA (the Double Helix) by Watson and Crick
secured for them the Nobel Prize in medicine. Another
important aspect of X-ray is its use in medicine which
allows surgeons and physicians to explore the innermost
PREAMBLE xxiii
part of the human body without surgically opening it.

The conclusions of experimental work done in a
scientist's own laboratory sometimes need public approval
or a seal of approval by established scientists in the field
or publication in a reputed journal to claim priority of
the justified conclusions of the experiment. For the first
type of confirmation (public), two experimental works
may be cited. When Von Guericke's experimental proof
of pressure of atmosphere on human body did not find
public approval, he had to perform a spectacular experiment
in front of a large assemblage. He selected two huge
Magdeburg hemispheres that could be joined together
after air had been evacuated from them. Two teams of
eight horses harnessed to each hemisphere could not
separate them but could do so easily when the stop-cork
was opened, to allow air to enter inside. Louis Pasteur,
on the other hand, had to prove publicly the protective
action of his vaccine against the virulent culture anthrax.
The experimental proof needed two groups of animals
comprising sheep, goats and cows. One group was given
his protective vaccine against anthrax while the other
remained unprotected. The observational period of
experiment was nearly three weeks in the presence of
visiting groups of farmers till the final result of the
protective value of Pasteur's vaccine was proved.
In France, scientific discovery had to be justified before
a team of experts appointed by the Science Academy, as
was the case in Moissan's discovery of fluorine or in
Pasteur's separation of salts of tartaric acid. In Moissan's
case, when he announced isolation of fluorine, the Science
Academy appointed an observation panel consisting of
his own professor Fremy, who had himself been unable
to isolate the gas. On the first occasion Moissan failed to
isolate the gas before the committee. After adjusting the
defective aspects Moissan succeeded in showing the
collection of the gas. Fremy immediately expressed his
surprise by saying, "A professor is always happy when
he sees one of his students proceed further and higher

than himself."
The second instance was in the separation of two
identical salts of tartaric acid which differed in their
structure. When separated by a polarometer, one salt
solution turned the light to the left and that of the second
turned to the right. When this experiment was performed
before the distinguished panel of scientists, Biot, the
seniormost scientist, expressed his excitement at this
breakthrough, "My dear child, I have so loved the sciences
throughout my life, it makes my heart leap with joy."
The third mode of justification is to publish one's
experimental work in a reputed and appropriate scientific
journal to claim the priority of the results expressed in
one's writing. Failure to choose a reputed journal for
one's publication may delay recognition in the scientific
world. An American scientist J. Willard Gibbs put forth
his 'phase rule' to explain the thermodynamical principle
in chemistry, but remained unrecognised due to its
publication in a small unknown American journal. After
nearly twenty years, German scientists with their gift of
recognising the genius of other nations put this 'phase
rule' before the scientific world after collecting material
on it from the dusty volumes of the journal. Gibbs was
called to be honoured by German scientists which made
Gibbs remark, "Had this honour come to me twenty years
earlier, how much greater work I would have done."
This remains the cri de coeur of the scientist for the failure
of recognition of his scientific work.
With proliferation of research work in various
laboratories of different nations, it is essential to get it
published immediately in order to claim the priority for
the work. This is fully illustrated in the case of the scientific
work on the structure of DNA by Crick and Watson.
Crick and Watson's total work on DNA consisted of two
research papers published in Nature. The first one was
published in April 1953 confirming their assumption of
PREAMBLE xxiii
the structure on the basis of the evidence of X-ray. The

second paper was published in the May 1953 issue of
Nature, where they claimed that the molecule had the
capacity for its own self-replication. They hesitated in
fully mentioning the importance of the structure of DNA
for genetic inheritance and referred to it in a single sentence
in their first publication. This showed that their caution
was due to the meticulous protection of their right on the
basic and the most important outcome mentioned in the
second paper. The two papers claimed for them the Nobel
Prize in 1962.
Dr Otto R. Frisch says that 'why' has different levels
of not only explaining the 'incident' (John's fracture) but
also different levels of cognitive pursuits commonly referred
to as 'disciplines'. In biology, 'why' is more successfully
explained on the basis of teleology (development is based
on the purpose for which it is meant) or is justified by
natural evolution. In chemistry, 'why' is justified on the
basis of the physical structure of the molecules and explains
the reactions on thermodynamical laws of enthalpy and
entropy. However, in the case of physics, if the study of
sub-atomic studies fails, it leads to the principles of
indeterminacy or probability. This reasoning for 'why' in
principle was opposed by Einstein. He said, "God does
not play dice with the world," and added a very significant
sentence, "it seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards...it
is something that I cannot believe for a single moment."
Thus failure in ascertaining the 'why' is due to the fact
that the instruments used for sub-microscopic events play
a role which prevents the maintenance of variables constant.
Frisch called them the 'hidden variables'.
1
ANECDOTES FROM THE
LIVES OF SCIENTISTS
AGASSIZ, JEAN LOUIS

Naturalist (1807-1873)
This Swiss-American naturalist, geologist and teacher made
significant contributions to ichthyology (the study of fish
forms) and knowledge about ice glaciers. After attending
the academy at Lausanne, Agassiz took his doctor of
philosophy degree from Erlangen, and his doctor of
medicine from Munich. His first major scientific work
was a detailed study of a large collection of fishes from
the Brazilian Amazon. This work was published in 1.829
when Agassiz was only twenty-two years old. In 1833,
he published his epoch-making work, Recherches sur les
Poissons Fossiles, in which he named nearly 1,000 fossil

fishes. Turning his attention to other extinct animals apart
from fishes, Agassiz published between 1839-1840 two
more volumes. He then began a new line of study—that
of the movements and effects of glaciers in Switzerland.
In 1846, he left for the United States and lectured at various
American universities and finally accepted a professor-
ship of zoology at Harvard, where he subsequently de-
veloped a comprehensive museum of research in zool-
ogy. With the publication of his book, Le Systeme Glaciare,
Agassiz became a reputed and popular figure at a very
young age.
He was once out travelling with some friends and
stopped at a place for refreshments. An elderly traveller
was also passing by and, hearing the name Agassiz
mentioned, came over to the young man who had been
addressed by that name. "Pardon me, but are you the
son of the celebrated Professor Agassiz of Neuchatel?"
Agassiz merely smiled and before he could say any-
thing, one of his friends remarked, "You are standing
before Professor Agassiz himself."
The traveller moved away with an apology mur-
muring to himself, "Such a modest young body for such
a wise old head!"
His book on ichthyology had won Agassiz the cov-
eted Wollaston Prize. He went to England to receive it
and confronted some scholars who were rather sceptical
about his work. They had just acquired a fossil so old
that it outdated all other available specimens of fish. Taking
advantage of the fact that even Agassiz had not described
the fish in his books as he had never seen the fossil, they
started testing the authoritativeness of his knowledge by
asking him to describe the type of fish that might be
found in a certain low geological stratum. The Swiss
naturalist went to the blackboard, and after discussing a
few preliminary points, drew a sketch of the 'hypotheti-
cal' fish. The fossil-specimen that the team had acquired
ANECDOTES FROM THE LIVES OF SCIENTISTS 3
was then brought in for comparison. The sketch bore an

unusual resemblance to the actual specimen. A thunder-
ous applause followed and one of the spectators remarked,
"As if by miracle, this man has unearthed the very plans
of God!"
Agassiz had become a household name in Neuchatel.
His passion for science and his works became a legend.
Once a well-known geologist Leopold von Buch visited
him and remarked jocularly, "At Neuchatel, every time
I knock at the doors of Agassiz, I am afraid lest he should
take me for a new species."
Once Agassiz had declined to deliver a public lec-
ture on account of the inroads his previous lectures had
made upon his research. The gentleman, who had been
deputed to secure the invitation, continued to press Agassiz
to accept, assuring him that the society would pay liber-
ally for his services.
"This is no inducement for me," replied Agassiz
angrily. "I cannot afford to waste my time in making
money."
Agassiz's method of teaching was through personal
discussions rather than imparting information. He dis-
couraged the use of books except in detailed research.
Among his favourite expressions were: "If you study nature
in books, when you go outdoors, you cannot find her";
"it's not text-books we want, but students"; "the book of
nature is always open"; "strive to interpret what really
exists".
In spite of the strong premonition that his end was
approaching near, Agassiz kept himself active and pre-
occupied with the construction of a summer school on
the remote island of Penikese, off Buzzard's Bay, where
teachers of nature could undertake scientific investiga-
tions under his guidance. The island was eighteen miles
away from the nearest coast and the school building was
an old abandoned barn. A few days before the class was
expected to arrive, he reached the island to find the work
on the old barn incomplete. Undaunted, Agassiz called

the carpenters together. With all the religious fervour of
a priest delivering a sermon, he said, "There is no per-
sonal gain involved in this school. There is no money to
be made. Its only purpose is to promote education. We
are confronted with an emergency. Since tomorrow is
Sunday, it's up to you to decide whether you want to
work or rest."
"We will work," replied the carpenters in unison.
And so, when the boat from New Bedford arrived with
its party of students and teachers, the school was ready.
On the wharf, as they disembarked, there stood the lone
figure of the old professor. He gathered them around
him and uttered a silent prayer. For the next few weeks,
he was to have the greatest influence on science teaching
in America. When he died a few months later, the school
closed for ever.
ALDUS SALAM (Servant of Peace)

Physicist
Aldus Salam was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in
1979. He believed that the awards that he won were Allah's
gifts and hence must be given back to Allah. In keeping
with his noble religious thoughts, all the money that he
received from different awards (Atoms for Peace Prize
L 30,000, Nobel Prize $ 66,000, Barcelona Prize $ 100,000
and Edinburgh Prize L 5,000) was not credited to his
personal account but given away to different charitable
and educational institutions.
He was former Director of International Centre for
Theoretical Physics (ICTP) established at Trieste.
AL-RAZI, MUHAMMAD
Clinical physician (865-925)
Reputed to be the greatest clinical physician of Islam,
Muhammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi earned the title of the
Arabic Galen (after the legendary Greek physician Galen),

and was referred to as the "most brilliant genius of the
Middle Ages" for his phenomenal achievements in the
field of medicine. Al-Razi received his medical training
in Baghdad, but later returned to Persia, the land of his
origin, to set up a hospital in Tehran.
Apart from being an extremely gifted physician, Al-
Razi was a free and radical thinker who believed that
man was fundamentally a rational being and that divin-
ity lay in this very faculty of rationality. This perspec-
tive, he said, allowed him to be an ethical and religious
physician, who could care very deeply for his patients,
whether they were rich or poor and whatever was their
social status.
His unconventional views on religion, however, did
not endear him to the dominant beliefs of that time..Later
writers condemned him for blasphemy because he openly
spoke of the superiority of reason over revelation. Due
to his radical views, most of Al-Razi's scholarly works
were either destroyed or relegated to oblivion.
Once, enraged by his blatantly unorthodox views,
the Emir of Bukhara ordered that Al-Razi be struck on
the head with his own book on medicine until either the
book tore or his head broke. At the end of the beating,
Al-Razi lost his eyesight completely. Ironically, later crit-
ics attributed his blindness to divine retribution. As a
result of this humiliation, Al-Razi lost all interest in liv-
ing further, and when an occulist suggested remedial
eye surgery, he replied, "I have seen enough of this world
and I do not cherish the hope of seeing more of it." He
died shortly thereafter.
ARCHIMEDES
Mathematician and scientist (287 B.C.-212 B.C.)
Greek mathematician, physicist and inventor, who made
numerous original contributions in mathematics and
geometry, was also responsible for certain areas of stat-

ics, hydrostatics and mathematical physics. His inven-
tions were mainly mechanical devices that were used in
war and later in peace. Archimedes studied in Alexan-
dria, the centre of scientific studies at that time and was
a student of the Euclideans. His first invention was a
'screw', useful for raising water from the Nile to irrigate
fields. The geometrical basis for this invention was the
helix and the cylinder.
Archimedes is most well known for the utterance
"Eureka! Eureka!" (I have found it! I have found it!) which
was supposedly his exclamation at having discovered
that the king's crown was a fake, since he found that the
specific gravity of the material of the crown did not tally
with that of pure gold. The ingenuity of his discovery
lay in the event when lying in a bath-tub he had insight
into what is today known aS^ the Archimedes principle.
This principle states that a body immersed in a fluid is
buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the dis-
placed fluid. The ratio of the weight of a substance to the
weight of water it displaced when immersed in it is there-
fore a constant and is known as the specific gravity of
the material. So great was his joy at this discovery that
Archimedes ran out into the streets of Syracuse, totally
unaware of his state of undress!

King Hieron had doubts about Archimedes' claim
that he could lift great weights with ease, using such
absurdly simple contraptions as pulleys. Archimedes is
said to have told the King, "Give me a point of support
and I shall move the world." He constructed a multiple
pulley, attaching one end of the rope that ran over it to
a heavily laden ship. He handed the other end of the
rope to the King and asked him to pull it gently. The
King pulled it and to his great astonishment, the ship
was lifted out of the water!
His well-known writings include Floating Bodies; The
Sand Reckoner; Measurement of the Circle, Sphere and Cyl-
inder; Method and Book of Lemmas. In 1906, a lost manu-
script found by a Danish scholar Jorn Heiberg carried
Archimedes' attempt at explaining his scientific method.
King Hieron asked Archimedes to devise new weap-
ons when the Romans were threatening to attack his native
city Syracuse. On discovering that a Roman fleet had set
sail under Marcellus, the feared Roman Commander,
Archimedes turned to the King and said, "I believe I can
destroy the fleet."
"By what means?" asked the King.
"By means of burning mirrors," replied Archimedes.
The King shook his head sadly, thinking that
Archimedes was either inebriated or was losing his fac-
ulties. Yet when the time came, Archimedes kept his word.
He trained a battery of specially constructed concave
mirrors that reflected the blazing rays of the sun directly
onto the ships. Sure enough, the fleet was destroyed!
The legendary Marcellus, on seeing the devastation
Archimedes had wrought upon his fleet, is said to have
exclaimed, "Let us stop fighting this geometrical mon-
ster, who uses our ships like cups to ladle water from the
sea, and has whipped our most efficient engines and
driven them off in disgrace, and with the uncanny jugglery
of his mind, has outrivalled the exploits of the hundred-
handed giants of mythology." It seems that the Roman

soldiers became so petrified of Archimedes that when-
ever they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting
over a wall, they cried, "Here he comes!"
So great was the respect that Marcellus had for his
adversary that when the Romans finally succeeded in
attacking Syracuse, he is said to have commanded, "Let
no one dare lay a violent hand upon Archimedes. This
man shall be our personal guest."
But the command was disobeyed. Archimedes was
sitting quietly on the edge of a market place, drawing a
circle on the sand, absorbed in mathematics, when a
drunken Roman soldier rushed up to him with a sword.
Archimedes quietly said, "Before you kill me, my friend,
pray let me finish my circle."
But the soldier paid no heed and plunged his sword
into his body. "Ah well!" Archimedes sighed just before
dying, "They have taken away my body, but I shall take
away my mind."
ARRHENIUS, SVANTE AUGUST

Physical chemist (1859-1927)
Arrhenius, the Swedish Nobel laureate of 1903, was
awarded the prize for his theory of electrolytic disasso-
ciation in chemistry. His doctoral thesis, that he submit-
ted at the Uppsala University in 1884, contained the same
work. Ironically, his thesis was awarded the lowest pass-
ing grade as it was too revolutionary for the examiners!
In 1889, Arrhenius discovered the remarkable na-
ture that chemical reactions display with rise in tempera-
ture. The equation that he wrote was found to be per-
fectly applicable to not only ordinary chemical reaction
rates, but biological rates as well. In the later years of his
life, Arrhenius worked on a remarkable hypothesis that
life on earth may have originated on other planets. His
suggestion was that the first earthly organisms may have
been viable spores driven through space by the pressure

of starlight.
Arrhenius served as Director of the Nobel Institute
of Physical Chemistry in Stockholm from 1905 till he died.
His last book was Chemistry in Modern Life.
Arrhenius, while putting down his revolutionary
'Disassociation Theory', was forced to follow the model
of the more antiquated theories of substances and solu-
tions of the time. Obliged to make his work look more
presentable, he infused into it some degree of verbosity,
which made the dissertation rather weighty and over-
powering. Years later, after being awarded a third-class
degree, he was given the Nobel Prize for the same work.
It was said that the only person who was impressed by
the 'weight' of his thoughts was the janitor who had to
carry the thesis to the referees!
ARYABHATTA
Atronomer (b. A.D. 476)
Aryabhatta, the legendary Indian astronomer, is credited
with the discovery of the rotation of the earth. He lived
at a time when interest in astronomy was at its peak in
India, and he provided a well-formulated basis for fu-
ture work through his famous astronomical treatise.
Ancient Vedic chants filled the air. In A.D. 499, at
twelve noon on March 21, a twenty-three year old as-
tronomer sprinkled holy water on his parchment and
quill. He gazed at the sun overhead, and while chanting
holy verses, wrote down the first letters of a treatise, in
the presence of other priests chanting in the background.
Although much of what Aryabhatta wrote was based on
thoroughly well-formulated observation and deduction,
the moving spirit behind the young man's insights into
astronomy was decidedly spiritual. This young astrono-
mer spent the next months writing, with very little re-
spite, the legendary epic Aryabhatiya. Much before the
concept of the earth as a spherical object rotating around

its own axis gained prominence in the West, Aryabhatta
had stated it so in his treatise.
BACON, ROGER
Philosopher and scientist (1214-1292)
Bacon was the English philosopher and holder of the
somewhat over-generalised title 'Father of Modern Sci-
ence'. Bacon's significant contribution to the philosophy
of science was his explanation about the role of experi-
ence and experiment in confirming or refuting specula-
tive hypotheses. Bacon was a firm believer in the practi-
cal value of scientific speculation and insisted that the
criterion for the use of scientific knowledge should be
part of a unifying ethical system. He is also credited with
the discovery of gunpowder, eyeglasses, and other im-
portant inventions, although there are no clear records
that can testify this. His early studies were in the Faculty
of Arts at Oxford and in early 1240 he went to Paris to
teach at the Arts Faculty of University of Paris. It was in
Paris, years later, that he turned his attention to provid-
ing a religious dimension to science through the influ-
ence of Aristotle.
What is not so commonly known is that during his
study of the laws of optics, Roger Bacon came tantalisingly
close to the principle of the telescope. In his writings can
be seen the following paragraph: "I believe I have come
upon certain laws whereby a child might appear to be a
giant and a man a mountain...Thus a small army might
appear very large...So also we might cause the sun, the
moon and the stars in appearance to descend here below
and similarly to appear above the heads of our enemies..."
Bacon's life took a different turn in 1252, when he
joined the Franciscan Order, although he was extremely
unhappy in it since the very beginning. However, he
carried on working on optics and the phenomenon of
natural light and the rainbow. However due to his differ-

ences with the authorities, he was transferred at short
notice to Paris in 1257. There he was even more miser-
able as he lacked money and other amenities. His iras-
cible temperament became worse, and people studiously
avoided him. Undaunted however, he managed to write
the Opus Majus, which is filled with moral fervour, a
characteristic of Bacon's writings.
From the tiny window of the prison cell to which he
was confined, Bacon would look out at the stars in the
night and dream of the day when his discoveries would
be accepted and lenses fashioned to bring the celestial
objects closer to the earth. A few days before his death,
he gathered his students around him and said, "I believe
that humanity shall accept as an axiom for its conduct,
the principle for which I have laid down my life—the
right to investigate. It is the credo of free men—this
opportunity to try, this privilege to err, this courage to
experiment anew. We scientists of the human spirit shall
experiment, experiment, ever experiment. Through cen-
turies of trial and error, through agonies of research...let
us experiment with laws and customs, with money sys-
tems and governments, until we chart the one true course—
until we find the majesty of our proper orbit as the plan-
ets above have theirs...and then at last we shall all move
together in the harmony of our spheres under the great
impulse of a single creation—one unity, one system, one
design."
Later chronicles reveal that he was imprisoned when
he returned to England in 1272, owing to a blasphemous
work that he had published at that time. Due to his quest
for scientific truth, which he understood to be perfectly
compatible with religious feeling, Roger Bacon incurred
the wrath of the clergy. He was subsequently impris-
oned and put in solitary confinement for fourteen years.
When he was finally set free, just before his death, his
body was a skeleton, but not his spirit. "The true man of
science," wrote Bacon, "neither receives wealth nor seeks

it...If he frequented kings and princes he would easily
find those who would bestow on him honours and wealth.
But that would hinder him from pursuing the great ex-
periments in which he delights...In his pursuit of knowl-
edge, the philosopher can remove even the walls of his
cell to the outermost limits of the world..."
BAEYER, JOHANN FRIEDRICH ADOLF VON

Organic chemist (1835-1917)
Baeyer was a German Nobel laureate who was awarded
the prize in 1905 "in recognition of his services in the
development of organic chemistry and the chemical in-
dustry through his work on organic dyes and hydro-
aromatic combinations." His first achievement was the
preparation of barbuturic acid, the base for what are
commonly referred to as sleeping pills. By 1880, he had
become well known for his work on indigo dye and other
synthetic organic compounds, which were soon patented
and marketed industrially. With his student William Perkin
Jr., he formulated the famous 'Baeyer's Strain Theory',
which indicates why rings of five or six carbon atoms are
the most common. Among his other notable students

were Freidrich Thiele, F. Schlenk, Heinrich Otto Wieland,
K u r t Meyer, Emil Fischer and Otto Fischer.
Baeyer studied chemistry at Heidelberg University
with the esteemed Robert Bunsen, whose emphasis on
the importance of physics in chemical training and re-
search are well known. Baeyer had the good fortune of
having another renowned teacher, none other than the
founder of the benzene structure, Freidrich August Kekule.
However, later in life, when Baeyer was asked whom he
ascribed his learning to, he surprised all and angered
some by saying that he held no respect for his formal
education. Baeyer always claimed that he was self-taught
and that was the only true education.
One of the great characteristics of Baeyer's research
work was his ability to use extremely simple apparatus.
His credo was that good research seldom needed compli-
cated gadgetry and simple 'home-made' apparatus could
suffice. One day, in deference to this credo, some stu-
dents brought a mechanical stirrer into the laboratory.
When Baeyer came to work the next day, he spotted the
gadget immediately and was immediately apprehensive
and suspicious about its merits. He then asked one of his
students to call Frau Baeyer to come and see the contrap-
tion. Her first remark, on seeing it was, "What a lovely
idea for making mayonnaise!" which probably left the
scientist even more confused than ever.
BANTING. SIR FREDRICK GRANT

Medical scientist (1891-1941)
The Canadian physician, who shared the Nobel Prize in
1923, made an extraordinary breakthrough in medicinal
research by extracting the insulin hormone from the
pancreas. This immediately made it possible to prolong
the lives of the victims of diabetes mellitus. Prior to this,
the high level of glucose accumulation in the bloodstream
meant certain death. Banting was, incidentally the first

Canadian to be awarded the Nobel Prize.
Banting's achievement in extracting the insulin hor-
mone was all the more remarkable because all previous
efforts to isolate the hormone had failed. This is because
once the pancreas is removed, its digestive enzymes soon
break down the insulin molecules. What Banting and his
assistant Best did was to tie off the pancreatic ducts of
several dogs for a period of seven weeks, after which the
pancreas shrivelled up and were functionless as diges-
tive organs. The source of the insulin hormone, called
the 'islets of Langherans', however remained intact and
a solution was extracted from these cells. This was how
the first insulin was isolated!
Banting was forty-nine when the Second World War
broke out. He promptly reported at a hospital base in
Ottawa. "I'm too old to fight, Sir," he said to the Colonel
in charge. "But, I'd like to join up with your medical unit
at the lowest ranking you can give me." He was given
the rank of Captain and he protested violently saying
that he would prefer to be a private. When he was raised
to the rank of Major, he protested even more and refused
to accept the promotion. After all other persuasive tactics
had failed, he was told that if he didn't accept the posi-
tion he would be promoted even further to a Colonel. At
which point, Banting conceded defeat and condescend-
ingly accepted the rank of a Major, saying, "I suppose a
man can try his best even in an exalted post."
'A stubborn man'—these were the words that best
described Banting. For instance, he was lying in hospital,
after being injured badly in the battle of Cambrai. His
arm had been shot and there was no chance of saving it.
"We must operate immediately," said the Army doctor
to Banting.
"You're not going to take my arm away from me,"
replied Banting. "Not if I can help it."
"We must amputate, my boy. Otherwise we may
not be able to save your life," the Army doctor

insisted.
"Oh no, not my arm. I'll risk the chance of dying."
And with these words, Banting turned on his side. He
risked his chance and lived. Six years later, he received
the Nobel Prize for medicine.
Banting and his trusted assistant Best did their work
on insulin in the laboratory of John J.R. Macleod, a professor
of physiology at the University of Toronto. Although
Macleod was from the laboratory and did not participate
in the work, the 1923 Nobel Prize in physiology and
medicine was awarded jointly to Banting and Macleod.
Banting was furious that Macleod and not Best had received
a share of the award. Immediately upon accepting the
award, he sent half of it to his assistant, with a telegram
that read: "You are with me in my share, always."
In February 1941, Banting took off in a bomber for
London. The plane ran into a squadron of German fighter
planes and was shot down. There was no other hope but
to bail out. Banting, seeing that the other two had no
possibility of doing so, stubbornly refused to leave the
doomed aircraft. The plane finally crashed into a frozen
lake and came to rest five feet deep in snow. The radio
operator was dead, and the pilot though badly injured
stumbled over to the cabin to see Banting lying quietly,
his eyes wide open and blood streaming profusely from
a huge gash in his head. His lips began moving and the
pilot quickly produced a pencil to take down what the
famous man had to say. But it was impossible to under-
stand vvhat the doctor was saying. Soon it was nightfall
and Banting began to lapse into bouts of unconscious-
ness. The pilot, realising that he must get help, left the
plane and went out into the wilderness. When he re-
turned, he found Banting lying on the snow five feet
away from the plane. Before dying, he had somehow
managed to struggle out of the wreckage and drifted out
into the open.
BERTHELOT, MARCELIN
Chemist (1827-1907)
One of France's most distinguished chemists in the 19th
century, Berthelot's major contribution was to show that
chemical phenomena are not governed by any special
laws but are explicable in terms of the general laws of
mechanics that are in operation throughout the universe.
Berthelot is credited with the invention of the terms 'exo-
thermic' and 'endothermic'. Berthelot became the profes-
sor of organic chemistry at the Ecole Supoerieure de Pharmacie
in 1859, and a member of the Academy of Medicine.
The story goes that the Berthelot and the Breguet fami-
lies had been friendly for years but Marcelin had not dared
to openly look at the beautiful Breguet daughter, Sophie,
until one day, an accident brought them into collision on
the Pont-Neuf. She was crossing the long bridge in front of
Berthelot and making her way with difficulty in the teeth of
a strong wind, when a sudden gust caught her skirt and
Tuscan hat and blew her straight into his arms. A week
later, Berthelot found himself married!
On the occasion of the public ceremony to honour
his seventy-fifth year, Berthelot once again insisted on
the humanising spirit of science. "It is not for the satis-
faction of our private vanity that the world today pays

homage to the man of science. It is because it knows that
the man of science really worthy of the name, conse-
crates his life disinterestedly to the great work of our
age—the amelioration of the lot of all, the rich, the poor,
the happy and the suffering. I know not if I have com-
pletely fulfilled the noble ideal, but at least it has brought
me strength to have made this the aim that has directed
my life."
Reminisced his fellow-chemist and friend Dixon:
"Berthelot was kindness itself. We were taken home and
entertained by Madam Berthelot, whose silver hair height-
ened the saint-like beauty of her face. Berthelot was full
of fire and quick replies. When Williamson rallied him
on the rapidity with which his memoirs appeared, Berthelot
replied, 'Ah! You English are too cautious, too fright-
ened of committing yourselves—what is worth doing is
worth publishing!' It was perhaps characteristic of him
that an hour before he had given me the opposite and
better advice!"
Berthelot once returned home to find his wife near-
ing her end and they both knew that death was near.
"What will become of him when I am no longer there,"
were the last words she spoke to her daughter.
Berthelot was alone with his wife when she died.
He then called his children into the room, kissed the
lifeless form, walked into the next room and threw him-
self upon a couch. Hearing him sigh, his son ran to him
and seized his hand, but Berthelot was already dead.
Dixon commented: "It was the cry of the heart that can-
not survive separation."
BERZELIUS, BARON JONS JAKOB

Chemist (1779-1848)
Regarded as the organiser of the science of chemistry,
Berzelius is credited with the discovery of selenium and
thorium, and with the isolation of silicon, molybdenum

and several other elements. He also evolved his dualistic
electrolytic theory, which stated for the first time that all
compounds are made up of negatively and positively
charged compounds. Earlier in his career, Berzelius gave
his attention to combining weights of elements and is
said to have determined the combined weights of forty-
three elements by analysing with his own hands some
2,000 different compounds. Considering that the labora-
tory facilities of the time were extremely limited, it goes
to his credit that some of his results, when converted to
modern formula weights, are amazingly accurate.
Berzelius was a colleague of the famous trio of the
time: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, John Dalton and Sir
Humphrey Davy. The quality of his experimental work
and the remarkable consistency of his theories made him
one of the great scientists of all time.
Berzelius did not marry until late in life. He wrote
in a letter: "Yes, my dear Woehler, I have now been a
benedict for six weeks. I have learned to know a side of
life of which I formerly had a false conception or none at
all." The bride was more than thirty years younger than
Berzelius, but they had a blissful married life. On his
wedding day, as Berzelius entered his bride's home, he
was handed a letter from the King of Sweden, Charles
Jean, with instructions that it was to be read aloud to the
guests. It announced that Berzelius was to be given the
dignity and title of 'Baron', in recognition of his eminent
services to Sweden. It was a little more than ten years
before his death, Berzelius was awarded the title of 'Baron'.
Berzelius was the most respected doyen of research
workers in chemistry. Sefstrom and Wohler, both had
worked in his laboratory. Sefstrom discovered a new
element 'vanadium', while Wohler had missed this dis-
covery in his own work. However, apart from many other
contributions in chemistry, he had succeeded in synthe-
sis of urea which constituted a breakthrough in chemis-
try. To console Wohler for his failure to identify and

discover vanadium, Berzelius wrote to him the following
letter:
"In the far north there lived in olden times the Goddess
Vanadis, beautiful and lovable. One day someone knocked
at the door. The goddess remained comfortably seated
and thought, 'Let the person knock again'. But there was
no more knocking and the one who had knocked went
down the steps. The goddess was curious to know who
it was. She sprang to the window and saw Wohler going
away. After a few days someone knocked again and
continued knocking. Finally the goddess herself opened
the door. Sefstrom entered and from this union vana-
dium was born."
BHABHA, HOMI
Atomic physicist (1909-1966)
The Indian atomic physicist, Homi Bhabha was regarded
as the father of independent India's scientific ethos and
its nuclear programme. He set up with the encourage-
ment of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a
prestigious centre for research in nuclear physics, which
later came to be known as the Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre. More than anything else, Bhabha is remembered
for his unwavering commitment to science and the great
hopes he had for the future of science in India.
The attention which Bhabha gave to the planning of
the Atomic Centre at Trombay is a legend. What is less
known is his role in designing the landscape in and around
the Centre. While planning the roads, he observed that
an ancient mango tree stood at that very spot where a
road was to pass. The civil engineer in charge of building
the roads had recommended that the old tree be up-
rooted so that a straight road could be built. This greatly
distressed Bhabha. He strongly felt that the tree, which
had lived at the place for more than a hundred years,
had every right to be there. After giving the problem a

great deal of attention, Bhabha suggested a realignment
of the road in exact civil engineering terms in order to
save the tree. Today the tree is still there: old and an-
cient, like a living monument.
Homi Bhabha, who chose to remain a bachelor, was
once asked if he was married. "Yes," he replied and then,
with a twinkle in his eye, added, "to creativity!"
BLACK, JOSEPH
Chemist (1728-1799)
Joseph Black is rightly known as the founder of the doc-
trines on latent heat and specific heat. Lord Brougham,
who regularly attended his lectures, paid the following
tribute in his memoirs:
"I have heard the greatest understandings of the
age giving forth their efforts in their most eloquent tongues,
I have heard the commanding periods of Pitt's majestic
oratory, the vehemence of Fox's burning declamation...but
I would without hesitation prefer, for mere intellectual
gratification, to be once more allowed the privilege of
being present, while the first philosopher of his age was
the historian of his own discoveries, and be an eyewit-
ness of those experiments by which he had formerly made

them, once more performed by his own hands."
During those days a professor's stipend was derived
largely from fees paid to him by the members attending
his class. Lord Brougham, when he first attended his
lectures wrote: "When I went to get a ticket for his class,
there stood upon his table a small brass instrument for
weighing the guineas given. On hearing who I was, he
entered into a conversation in a most kind manner...
When I turned to go away, he remarked, 'You must have
been surprised at my using this instrument to weigh
your guineas, but it was before I knew who you were. I
am obliged to weigh these when strange students come,
there being a very large number who bring light guineas
so that I should be defrauded by many pounds every
year if I did not act in self-defence against that class of
students'."
BOHM, DAVID
Scientist
This American-British scientist is renowned for his cur-
rent work on quantum reality and his notion of explicate
and implicate levels of orders. Bohm completed his doc-
toral thesis with Robert Oppenheimer during the Second
World War. After that he joined the Princeton Univer-
sity, where he met Albert Einstein, with whom he col-
laborated for a number of years. Bohm is also well known
in physics for his book on quantum physics written in
1951.
Bohm's interest in science and the way things work
started early. As a young boy growing up in Wilkes-
Barre, Pennsylvania, he invented a dripless tea-kettle, and
his father, a successful businessman, urged him to mar-
ket the idea and make a profit on it. He was excited at
first, but after learning that the first step in such a ven-
ture was to conduct a door-to-door survey to test his
invention, the young David Bohm lost all interest in

business.
In 1951, there began the infamous trial of
Oppenheimer, for allegedly subversive activities against
the US government. David Bohm, who had worked with
Oppenheimer as a doctoral student, was then called in
by the Senator Joseph McCarthy Committee to testify
against Oppenheimer. Bohm refused and as a result was
sacked from Princeton University for disobedience. That
is when he left the US, never to work there or stay there
for long again.
As a child, Bohm liked to climb the hills that sur-
rounded his little town and look down on the streets and
houses below. In later life he recalled that his under-
standing of reality as a web of inter-connectedness was
connected to a strong insight he once had when he had
climbed the hills. Bohm had been thinking about nature
and his own existence when he became overpowered on
seeing the lights from the town. The energy from these
lights, the young Bohm realised, went out from the town,
extending beyond the earth, until it filled the universe
itself. Nature, thought Bohm, 'was a web of living en-
ergy, each object a mirror made up of strand upon strand
of all that is'.
After moving to England in the late fifties, he be-
came a research fellow at London's Birbeck College, from
where he retired as a professor of theoretical physics.
BOHR, AAGE
Physicist (1922- )
The son of the illustrious Neils Bohr, Aage was born in
1922, the same year that his father was awarded the Nobel
Prize. More than fifty years later, Aage Bohr was also to
receive the same award for his work in physics. He took
over the directorship of the prestigious Bohr Institute of
Theoretical Physics in Denmark after his father left it.
Apart from their shared interest in physics, father

and son shared a great sense of humour. Both enjoyed a
good joke and proved this in 1951 when together they
solved the fiddle concerning a new Danish toy, the 'tip-
top', that became a true national pest (and earned its
inventor a fortune). Once it had been set into motion, the
top would continue to spin as if the law of gravity had
ceased to exist. But the two scientists solved the problem
and Aage Bohr published what in his words was a "simple
and obvious explanation", that hardly anybody else un-
derstood!
BOHR, NIELS
Physicist (1885-1962)
Danish Nobel laureate in physics in 1922, Niels Bohr is
recognised as one of the most accomplished theoretical
physicists of all time. He was only twenty-one years old
when he was awarded the prestigious gold medal of the
Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, for his original
work on experimental and theoretical investigation of the
surface tension of water. This was followed four years
later by a brilliant doctoral thesis on the electron theory
of metals, which to this day, is considered a classic. His

basic ideas on atomic structure were formed in Manches-
ter where he spent four years from 1912 to 1916, working
with Rutherford, leading to his papers on the subject in
1913. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on
atomic structure in 1922. With the Nazi occupation of
Denmark in 1944, Bohr on the advice of his British col-
leagues, escaped from Copenhagen to Sweden and even-
tually reached England. Later he was called to America,
where he was requested to work on the bomb. Bohr was
president of the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
from 1939 until his death; he founded the Danish Atomic
Energy Commission in 1955, the Nordic Institute for
Theoretical Atomic Physics in 1957, and took part in the
establishment of the prestigious CERN institute.
Since his childhood Niels Bohr was incapable of 'teas-
ing back'. Once his brother Harold, from whom he was
inseparable, started teasing him. He stood silent for some
time before finally blurting, "You've got a small spot on
your coat, Harold."
Niels and Margrethe Bohr were a devoted married
couple. He often said that it was Margrethe who made it
possible for the harmony between his professional and
personal life. Often he used to break off in the middle of
a long and tedious discussion, saying: "I'll be back. There
is something I must remember to tell my wife." His as-
sociates, ready to drop with fatigue, were left behind
fully aware that it was nothing important but that Bohr,
however untiring, simply needed to obtain strength and
inspiration from Margrethe Bohr to get on with his work.
Before fleeing Nazi-occupied Denmark to reach En-
gland, Bohr had to live underground, as he was on the
wanted list of the Nazis. One day, while going in dis-
guise to a secret laboratory, he bumped into an elderly
woman who peered closely at him and said, "Aren't you
Professor Bohr?"
Trying to act natural, the physicist laughed and said,
"You must be quite wrong. My name is Baker." On closer

inspection, he realised that she was an old and dear fam-
ily friend, and so he tried to improve on his earlier state-
ment: "Madam, I may be Mr Baker, but you are certainly
Mrs Brunn. What a pleasure to meet!"
In spite of the danger of continuing to live in Den-
mark, Bohr was unwilling to leave his institute and his
associates among whom were Jewish refugees. But the
situation became so critical in September 1943 that he
and his wife were compelled to seek refuge in Sweden.
From there, he flew to England in a tiny 'mosquito'. It
was a dangerous expedition—the small unarmed plane
had to fly through German controlled airspace and worse
still, Bohr had to crouch in the bomb-storage area, as that
was the only place for a passenger. Moreover, the oxy-
gen supply failed and Bohr barely made it to England.
Bohr eventually landed in New York, along with his
son Aage, accompanied by two British detectives. Here,
the party was joined by two secret service agents of the
Manhattan Project Organisation and two officers of the
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). Bohr disliked be-
ing shadowed by half a dozen watchdogs and kept try-
ing to slip away from them. What he ended up doing
was cross the streets of New York at the oddest and
prohibited places, compelling six guardians of the law to
join him in breaking traffic regulations!
On way to the bomb project in Los Alamos for the
first time, he was given a lecture by General Groves in
the train on what to say and what not to. Bohr kept
nodding. "Within five minutes of his arrival," reported
the General later, "he was saying everything he prom-
ised he would not say."
Though critical of the consequences of the research
he was asked to do on developing the bomb, Bohr also
foresaw the necessity for the bomb, saying that it might
make future wars impossible. A genuine humanita-
rian and a pacificist, Bohr endeavoured to appeal to
statesmen and politicians, calling for a policy of open-

ness, which as expected was ignored. In 1950, he made
an appeal to the United Nations, publicly advocating his
policy of free exchange of information as the first step in
restoring mutual confidence and understanding between
nations.
Bohr became an addict of American western movies
with titles such as 'The Gun Fight at the Lazy Gee Ranch'
and The Lone Ranger7 and 'The Sioux Girl'. George Gamow
reminisced: "One of our duties was to take Niels to the
movies and explain the plot to him. He was a slow thinker
and kept asking questions, 'Is this the sister of the cow-
boy who tried to steal the herd of cattle belonging to her
brother-in-law'?"
During a serious discussion on quantum processes,
some physicists including Bohr took to laughing wildly.
A newcomer found this, in some way, disrespectful. Bohr
drew on his pipe and explained with a gentle smile, "There
are some things that are so serious that you can only
joke about them."
Bohr was dictating a few sentences to Pais. He
suddenly halted at the word 'Einstein'. Then he started
running around the table, repeating 'Einstein, Einstein,
Einstein'. Suddenly he stopped to look out of the window,
still repeating the name. At that instant the door opened
softly and Einstein stuck his head in. As soon as he heard
his name being repeated by Bohr, he put his finger to his
lips in a signal to Pais to remain silent, and to Pais'
surprise, tiptoed over to stand just behind Bohr. At that
instant, Bohr, with another (firmer) 'EINSTEIN', turned
around. "They were face to face, as if Bohr had summoned
him forth," said Pais later. "For some time, Bohr stood
there in frozen shock. Only after a few minutes was the
tableau broken. Then we all burst into laughter."
"It's mind-boggling," a young physicist complained
after a long and abstract discourse by Bohr.
"If it doesn't boggle your mind, you don't under
stand anything," replied Bohr.
When Niels Bohr visited the Physics Institute of the

Academy of Sciences, USSR, he was questioned on how he
had succeeded in creating a first-rate school of physicists.
His reply was, "Presumably because I was never embar-
rassed to confess to my students that I am a fool..."
When Bohr was engaged in something he always
felt a need for discussing it with others. A conversation
with Bohr went, as he himself did, in circles when he
spoke. Round and round he wandered on his own track
with a sovereignty that was made beautiful by his loving
smile as he encircled both his subject and his audience in
narrower and narrower circuits. And as a passionate pipe-
smoker, he lit matches all the time whether his pipe was
lit or not. Bohr's consumption of matches was legendary.
He could not manage with the ordinary small boxes but
always carried around gigantic boxes of matches with
him. Once Bohr was lecturing to his students when one
of them asked about the direction physics would take.
Unperturbed, he quoted from Goethe's Faust, "What is
the path? There is no path. On into the unknown."
In 1947, Bohr received the Order of the Elephant,
the highest honour awarded to Danes who are not mem-
bers of the Royal family. When it came to choosing his
coat of arms, that would be placed in the Frederiksborg
Castle, he unhesitatingly chose the Chinese symbol of
Yin-Yang, the two opposite elements that compliment
each other, and which together describe the whole world.
After the war Niels Bohr returned to Denmark and
visited his institution. He was received with cheers and
happy tears by his academic staff. He was taken round
the laboratory to see in a bottle dissolved noble metals
which subsequently were recovered and recast.
BOSE, SIR JAGADISH CHANDRA

Physicist-biologist (1858-1937)
An Indian plant physiologist and physicist, Jagadish
Chandra Bose was one of the pioneers of modern science

in India. His early research was on the properties of elec-
tric waves, which contributed very significantly to fur-
ther research in the subject. His major achievement was
to demonstrate the similarity of responses to stimuli among
the living and the non-living as well as the fundamental
similarity of responses in plant and animal tissues. To
carry out his research in this extraordinary field, he in-
vented the crescograph, which records plant growth.
Among his well-known published works are Responses in
the Living and Non-Living and Plant Responses.
He was knighted by the British government in 1917
and in the same year, he founded the Bose Research
Institute in Calcutta, of which he was Director till his
death in 1937.
When the young Bose joined a missionary school in
Calcutta, he found himself taunted and ridiculed by the
European and Anglo-Indian boys, who were amused by
his humble, rural background. One of the boys was a
boxer who kept bullying Jagadish. One day, unable to
tolerate the growing ridicule and the bullying, Jagadish
challenged the other student to a fight and then beat him
squarely. This earned him self-respect and no one dared
to tease him after that.
All the great scientists of London had assembled to

witness Bose's experiment to prove that plants also have
life. When the plant did not die as expected after he had
injected it with a poison, Bose was unperturbed. He sim-
ply said, "The poison did not kill the plant. So it should
not kill me, another living being." So, just to make sure,
he brought the injection syringe close to his left arm to
inject its contents into his body.
At that moment a man got up and said, "I accept
my defeat, Mr Bose. It was I who replaced the vial of
poison with coloured water." Needless to say the experi-
ment was successful the second time around.
Bose's interest in botany and physiology was in part
a reversion to his early childhood passion and a reaction
to what he considered was a western emphasis on
specialisation. He believed that by focussing on the bound-
aries between different physical and biological sciences,
he would be able to demonstrate the underlying unity of
all things. In one of his writings, Bose wrote, "In my
scientific research...an unconscious theological bias was
also present...It is forgotten that He, who surrounded us
with this ever-evolving mystery of creation, the ineffable
wonder that lies hidden in the microcosm of the dust
particle enclosing within the intricacies of its atomic form
all the mystery of the cosmos, has also implanted in us
the desire to question and understand."
Bose believed that the true scientist must learn to
evoke, look and listen, rather than probe and analyse
from a distance. After discovering a resonant and oscil-
lating recorder which measured the electric response of
plants to external stimuli, Bose commented: "It has been
beautifully said—and it is a law of the moral world as
unchangeable as physical laws: 'Ask and it shall be given
to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be
opened to you'."
Bose's biological researches were prompted initially
by the discovery that an electric receiver seems to show
signs of fatigue after continued use. He began to wonder

how far it was legitimate to compare the responses of
living and inert matter to external stimuli, and whether
or not plants could be shown to possess some sort of
latent consciousness. He was, however, unable to progress
very far, and the evaluation of his work in the 1945 edi-
tion of the Ena/clopaedia Britannica—eight years after his
death—was a fair one: "His research was so much in
advance of his time that precise evaluation is not pos-
sible."
After completing his studies in London, Bose returned
to Calcutta and was appointed professor at the Presidency
College, in Calcutta. However, his salary was kept at two-
thirds that of a European and was further halved as he was
supposed to be officiating only. Bose's protest against this
injustice was unique and typical of the man. He accepted
the job, but refused to take his salary cheque for the next
three years. Finally realising the value of his work and by
a special order from His Majesty's government, his demand
was conceded and he was paid full salary with retrospec-
tive effect for all three years.
BOSE, SATYENDRA NATH

Mathematician (1894-1974)
« This Indian mathematician made enormous contribution
to the subject of quantum statistics. Together with Einstein,
Bose suggested a statistical description of quantum me-
chanical systems in which there is no restriction on the
way in which the energy of particles can be distributed.
The theory subsequently came to be described as the
Bose-Einstein Statistics.
As a Reader in physics at Dacca University, in the
year 1923, Satyendra Nath Bose submitted a paper in
quantum physics for publication in the research maga-
zine of the university. The paper was rejected by the
editorial board. Undaunted, Bose sent the paper to none
other than Einstein, with a respectful letter asking him

whether it could be published in Zeitschrift fur Physik. He
also requested Einstein to translate the paper as his own
German was very weak. Einstein not only translated the
paper and had it published, but appended it with the
line, "Bose's method of derivation...in my opinion signi-
fies a forward step."
On another occasion Niels Bohr was delivering a
lecture, S.N. Bose was in the chair. Bohr was writing on
the blackboard trying to explain a point, but finding it a
difficult task turned to Bose and asked, "Can Professor
Bose help me?"
Bose had been sitting with his eyes closed through-
out the discourse. A titter ran through the audience. To
everyone's astonishment, Bose opened his eyes, got up,
solved the problem, sat down and closed his eyes
again!
International recognition eluded Bose for a long time.
Thirty-four years after his discovery of the behaviour of
radiation, he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. On
several occasions, he had to take testimonials from
relatively more famous physicists like Einstein to
convince the authorities of his worth. He could talk on
any subject: from the price of fish to the latest problem
in physics.
At an international seminar in Calcutta held to fe-
licitate his work, Bose said that he had no desire to live
any longer as his work was finally being recognised all
over the world. A month later, he died.
BRAGG, SIR WILLIAM HENRY

One of the original greats of science, Sir William Bragg
had a brilliant record as a mathematician at Cambridge,
after which he taught and researched at the University of
Adelaide in Australia for over fifteen years. Returning to
England, he became the Cavendish professor at Leeds,

where he built the first X-ray spectrometer. In 1915, the
year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize along with his
son, he became professor of physics at London Univer-
sity and subsequently resident professor and Director of
the laboratories of the Royal Institution.
Bragg's career as a scientist, was, to put it mildly,
unusual in many ways. Although he was trained as a
mathematician, he had absolutely no inkling of physics.
However, he found himself appointed as professor of
physics and mathematics at Adelaide University, where
he had to literally teach himself physics before he could
teach his students. Regarding laboratory work, having
hardly used any apparatus, Bragg began by learning how
to use a lathe. He then ended up devising whatever was
needed for the practicals himself. As a result, he devel-
oped such a keenness for instrumental design that it was
reflected later in all his experimental work. Although he
had never done any research whatsoever until he was
forty-two, it took him only a few years to gain interna-
tional repute.
The nature of light has always been a problem for
scientists. Referring to its peculiarities, Sir William Bragg
once remarked, "Light behaves like waves on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays, like particles on Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Saturdays, and like nothing on Sundays."
Sir Bragg took active part in the educational films
meant for schools. The director of the film once pointed
out that due to a particular scene which, was not upto
the mark, the entire sequence would have to be redone.
It required Bragg to put on the same suit which he had
worn in an earlier shot. Unfortunately that suit had been
sold off by his wife at a jumble sale. Somehow his wife
managed to secure the coat but not the trousers. Sir Bragg
had to request the director to take the missing shot on
him from the waist upwards and not of his legs. Such a
predicament was a unique experience for him.
BRAGG, SIR WILLIAM LAWRENCE

This illustrious son and the equally illustrious father were
uniquely credited for keeping the Nobel Prize for phys-
ics in 1915 within the family. They did fundamental work
on determination of the crystal structure by means of X-
ray diffraction.
William Lawrence Bragg was born in Adelaide where
his father was teaching at the time. During the First World
War, he was a technical advisor on sound ranging for the
British Army, perfecting methods of locating enemy guns
by sound triangulation methods. In 1921, he was elected
a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1938, he became the
Cavendish professor at Cambridge; in 1941, he was
knighted. From 1954 to 1966, he was Director of the Royal
Institution of England, carrying on the tradition of
popularising science that had begun with Sir Humphrey
Davy, Michael Faraday and John Tyndall.
In 1912, Max von Laue in Germany published a paper
in which he announced that crystals apparently acted
like three-dimensional diffraction gratings when X-rays
passed through them, thereby supporting the theory that
X-rays are electromagnetic waves rather than particles.
The elder Bragg, however, had developed a theory that
said exactly the contrary and he set about checking von
Laue's results in order to disprove them. To do this, he
first invented the X-ray spectrometer. Meanwhile the
younger Bragg had returned to his studies at Cambridge
and slowly became convinced that his father was totally
wrong. More importantly, he went further and predicted
that the diffraction patterns were actually a representa-
tion of the location of atoms in crystals. This is where his
father's invention of the spectrometer became useful; the
two Braggs turned to the analysis of crystal structure
and founded modern crystallography!
BRAHE, TYCHO DE
Astronomer (1546-1601)
The Danish astronomer, who is well known as the dis-
coverer of the 'new star' in Cassiopeia, was one of the
famous practical astronomers of the late renaissance. Brahe
was the son of a Danish nobleman and studied at
Copenhagen, Leipzig, Rostock and Augsburg. He dis-
covered the famous 'new star' on 11 November 1572.
Tycho Brahe was the first to allow for the effect of refrac-
tion by the earth's atmosphere on astronomical observa-
tions and introduced methods for correction of instru-
mental errors and the averaging of accidental errors.
Tycho's father was Governor of the Elsinore Castle
and his uncle, a country squire and Vice-Admiral. This
uncle, being childless, had extracted a promise from his
brother, the Governor, that if the latter had a son, he
would adopt him and bring him up as his own. How-
ever, after a son was born to the Governor's wife, he
went back on his agreement. The uncle retaliated by kid-
napping the baby who was none other than Tycho.
As a student, Tycho fought a duel with another noble
Danish youth over a dispute regarding who was the better
mathematician of the two. In the process, a big part of
Tycho's nose was cut off. This was replaced by a gold
and silver alloy, which gave his nose a rectilinear shape.

With his bald and large egg-shaped head and an over-
sized handle-bar moustache, the cubistic nose gave Tycho
Brahe quite an appearance.
Tycho's reputation had been established by now and
he spent much of his time travelling widely in Europe,
visiting friends and astronomers. One who impressed
him most was Wilhelm IV in Cassel, in Germany. He
had built himself an observatory on a tower in Cassel,
and so devoted was he to astronomy that, when told that
his house was on fire while he was observing a new star
with Tycho Brahe, he calmly finished his observation,
while his house was going up in flames!
King Frederick II of Denmark was a patron of philoso-
phy and the arts. Moreover, his life had been once saved
by Tycho's foster-father, the Vice-Admiral. Now eager to
preserve Tycho Brahe for Denmark, Frederick offered him
a choice of several castles, which were however found
unacceptable. Finally, he lured Brahe, who had almost
settled in Germany, by offering him an entire island called
Hveen between Copenhagen and the Elsinore Castle. It
was three miles in length and extended over two thou-
sand acres of flat table-land rising on sheer white cliffs
out of the sea. In addition to a castle and an observatory,
Tycho Brahe was given an annual grant plus various
funds that made him the highest paid man in Denmark.
Tycho no doubt accepted the offer.
The fortress that Tycho Brahe built on Hveen was
monstrous. The basement had his own printing press,
fed by his own papermill, his alchemist's furnace and his
private dungeon. There was also a huge underground
observatory with only their domes extending over the -
earth's surface. There were all kinds of gadgets, includ-
ing statues that turned on hidden mechanisms, and a
communication system that enabled Tycho to ring a bell
in the room of any of his assistants—which made his
guests believe that he was invoking them by magic.
In the midst of all this splendour, Tycho Brahe was

going to seed. He is described as a pompous and arro-
gant figure who kept rubbing ointment on his alloyed
nose while presiding over the extravagant banquets that
were regularly held on the island. He also had a fool,
called Jeppe, who sat at his master's feet under the table,
chattering incessantly amidst the general noise. He was
a dwarf, reputed to have had second sight, and Tycho
Brahe would throw casual left-overs of food to him.
The only thing missing from his island was his tame
elk. It had been dispatched to him from his estate, but
never reached the island. While spending a transit night
at Landskroner Castle, the prized elk wandered up the
stairs to an empty apartment where it drank so much
strong beer that on its way downstairs, it stumbled, broke
its leg and died!
BUNSEN, ROBERT WILHELM VON

Chemist (1811-1899)
«
The German chemist, who is widely known as the inven-

tor of the Bunsen burner, was also the co-founder of
chemical spectroscopy. His first paper on the subject was
published in 1859, which stated that every chemical ele-
ment was characterised by a particular spectrum. Using
this tool, he was the first to prepare analytically pure
compounds of potassium, sodium, lithium, barium, stron-
tium and calcium. Bunsen and Kirchhoff also predicted
that the spectrum analysis would lead to the prediction
of new elements. And a year later, rubidium and cesium
were discovered by means of spectroscopy.
Attendance during Bunsen's lectures was optional.
Yet at the end of the term students had to get a signed
certificate from the professor. One student who had as-
siduously avoided Bunsen's lectures for a whole term,
approached him for a certificate of attendance. Seeing
the unfamiliar face, Bunsen remarked, "I have never seen
you at a lecture."
The student immediately replied, "Professor, you see,

I always sit behind the pillar in the classroom."
Bunsen retorted, "Ah, what a lot of you sit there!"
Bunsen was often absent-minded and his difficulty
in remembering names was legendary. One day a known
visitor called, whose name eluded Bunsen. He however
managed to narrow his guess down to possible names:
Kekule or Strecker. During the conversation, he tried
without any success in figuring out which of the two
gentlemen was his caller. At last he decided that it had
to be Kekule. When the visitor finally rose to leave, a
confident Bunsen could not refrain from remarking, "Do
you know, that for a moment I took you for Strecker!"
"That's who I am!" replied his visitor in astonish-
ment.
When the 500th anniversary of Heidelberg Univer-
sity was celebrated in 1886, an elaborate breakfast was
served, which lasted for more than three hours. Bunsen
soon fell into a deep slumber as the tiresome speeches
began but, at one place, a speaker's loud oratory caused
the chemist to awake with a start. Rubbing his eyes, he
mumbled to his neighbour, "I thought I had let a test-
tube full of rubidium fall to the floor!"
On another occasion, an English woman to whom
he had just been introduced, mistook him for Josias Bunsen,
the ambassador, and asked him if he had finished .his
book Gott in der Geschichte (God in History).
"Alas," replied Bunsen, "my untimely death pre-
vented me!"
Bunsen was extremely modest when he found it
necesssary to mention his own discoveries in his lectures,
and he would say, Man hat gefunden (It has been discov-
ered), never using the word T.
Bunsen won many honours and medals, but of these
he once said sadly, "Such things had value for me only
because they pleased my mother; she is now dead."
Bunsen had a very sharp mind and he persevered
tirelessly. Rosco said of him: "Original scientific work is

measured by the new paths and new fields which such
work open out. In this respect, the labours of Bunsen
stand second to those of no chemist of his time."
Sir E. Thrope spoke thus of him: "Before Bunsen
gave a piece of apparatus to the chemical world, he left
it perfectly perfect. The striving after perfection was a
veritable passion with him."
CARROLL, LEWIS
Writer-mathematician (1832-1898)
British mathematician and writer, Lewis Carroll is best
known as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
which was published in 1865. His real name was Charles
Lytwidge Dodgson and he graduated with honours in
mathematics, after which he became a lecturer at Christ
Church, Oxford. Under his real name, he published a
number of mathematical works, including Euclid and
Modern Rivals, Curiosa Mathematica and Symbolic Logic.
He gained enormous success and international recogni-
tion with the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonder-
land. His fame during his lifetime was further enhanced
by his outstanding photography of children.
Lewis Carroll gave the following practical advice on

problem solving. "When I come upon anything—in logic
or in any difficult subject—that entirely puzzles me, I
find it a capital plan to talk it over aloud to myself. One
can explain things so clearly to oneself...one never gets
irritated at one's own stupidity."
Lewis Carroll had a rather bad stammer, which
imbued a sense of insecurity in him, keeping him away
from the company of others. However, the affliction com-
pletely disappeared when he was in the company of
children!
CAVENDISH, HENRY
Chemist-physicist (1731-1810)
British chemist and physicist Cavendish is best known
for the determination of Newton's gravitational constant
and for his research in gas chemistry and electrical theory.
Apart from being one of the greatest scientists of his
time, Cavendish was also one of the wealthiest men of
his days. He had several houses in London and also a
library in Soho. He began as an assistant in his father's
laboratory, where he started his research to pursue single-
mindedly for over fifty years. He was elected fellow of
the Royal Society of London in 1760. He was the first to
discover the separate existence of hydrogen and more-
over, was the first to synthesise water from hydrogen
and oxygen. He also went on to produce nitric acid from
a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour, and
discovered that nitrogen was a constituent of nitric acid.
Cavendish was also the first to propose that every charged
body was surrounded by an 'electric atmosphere'—a major
step towards the formulation of the electric field theory.
The torsion balance that is so widely used in laboratories
bears his name, with which, in 1798, he determined the
value of the gravitational constant.
Cavendish was an extremely shy and awkward man
and to him all men were strangers. The only social con-
tacts he ever made were at the meetings of the Royal
Society and the Sunday evening receptions of Sir Joseph
Banks for scientists in London. He spoke falteringly and
in shrill tones and was totally unable to converse with
more than one person at a time. A distinguished Aus-
trian scientist was once introduced to Cavendish with
extravagant praise. The foreign guest in turn, became
profuse in his flattery of Cavendish, saying that he had
come to London especially to meet him, whereupon
Cavendish, at first embarrassed, then utterly confused,
darted through the crowd like a rabbit, where his car-
riage was waiting, jumped into it and disappeared.
Dr Wollaston, however, had discovered a method of
overcoming this diffidence in Cavendish. "The way to
talk to Cavendish," he said, "is never to look at him, but
to talk as if it were into vacancy, and then it is not un-
likely that you may set him going."
A confirmed misogynist, Cavendish never married or
entered into any liaison with the feminine sex. Returning
home one day, he saw a female servant with a broom and
pail on the staircase. So annoyed was he that he immedi-
ately ordered a new back staircase to be built! (He had
already dismissed a number of maids who had crossed his
path in the house). Once before, as he was climbing over a
stile, he observed to his horror that he was being watched
by two ladles. He forsook that road forever and took his
solitary walks only when it was dark enough.
Cavendish was noted for his idiosyncracies, which
sometimes ran into the absurd. For example, every time
he took a book from his personal library at home, he
never forgot to sign the book card!
During his father's lifetime, Cavendish lived on a
meagre allowance, but after his father's death, he received
an enormous inheritance. Soon another aunt died, leav-
ing him another large legacy. He thus became, as Biot
said, "the richest of all the learned and the most learned
of all the rich." But he continued to live very modestly

and the interest on his inheritance kept accumulating
until, at the time of his death, he was the largest deposi-
tor in the Bank of England.
Cavendish's death was as lonely as his life. He lived
to be seventy-nine, and then, one day, feeling death
approaching, he asked his attendant to leave the room
and return at a specific time. When the attendant re-
turned, he found Cavendish dead. It was the end of a
blameless life, unselfishly devoted to the advancement of
science.
CHANDRASEKHAR, S.
Astronomer-mathematician
India-born American astronomer and mathematician, who

was awarded the Nobel Prize for astronomy, acquired
fame for his work on 'Relativistic Degeneracy of Stars'.
Initially a fellow at Trinity College in England, he moved
to the University of Chicago where he worked at the
Yerke's observatory for twenty-seven years. In between,
during wartime, he was specially hand-picked by John
von Neumann to work at the ballistic research laboratory
in Maryland. From 1952 to 1971, he was also the manag-
ing editor of the renowned Astrophysical Journal.
Chandrasekhar was born in an intellectually-minded

family, where higher education in England was a matter
of tradition. After completing his undergraduate studies
in India, the young Chandra almost succumbed to the
pressure of tradition to appear for the prestigious Indian
Civil Service examination. His mother stood by him and
urged Chandra to further his prodigious mathematical
talents by going to Cambridge on a Government of India
scholarship. When he departed, it was for the last time
he was to see his mother, as she died soon afterwards.
While at Cambridge, Chandrasekhar became involved
in the well-known controversy with Sir Arthur Eddington,
who after mentoring the younger scientist, turned his
back on him by branding Chandrasekhar's work as fal-
lacious. Eddington was obviously peeved at
Chandrasekhar's brilliance and growing recognition and
kept justifying his stance with obscure and irrational
arguments, even when reputed physicists and mathema-
ticians like Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac and Ronald Peierls
supported Chandra's derivation of the relativistic equa-
tion. Ironically, he received the Nobel Prize for his work,
more than thirty years later!
Chandrasekhar's indebtedness to his wife Lalitha for
transforming his views is obvious in his Scientific Biogra-
phy. Unlike his family, which although belonged to the
intellectual elite but had a tradition of preventing girls
from advanced education for the sake of an early mar-
riage, Lalitha's family was enlightened enough not to. It
meant a great deal to Chandrasekhar since both his sis-
ters had been denied education, being given away in
early marriages, and causing him a lot of unhappiness in
return.
As managing editor of the Astrophysical Journal,
Chandrasekhar's style of work was legendary. He per-
sonally read, corrected and edited all the papers for"
publication, and demanded the same meticulous stan-
dards in manuscript preparation, whether the writers
happened to be young scientists or Nobel laureates. During

his tenure he transformed the journal from being a pri-
vate journal of the University of Chicago into a national
journal of the American Astronomical Society.
CHARLES, JACQUES ALEXANDRE CESAR

Mathematician-physicist (1746-1823)
The French mathematician and physicist was the first
in 1783 to use hydrogen for the inflation of balloons.
Charles also anticipated Gay-Lussac's law of the expan-
sion of gases with heat, which on that account is known
by his name. He also improved theGreavesandheliostat
and the aerometer of Fahrenheit, and invented a thermo-
metric hydrometer, and many other ingenious physical
devices.
Within nine days of the Montgolfiers Brothers' as-
cent in a hot-air balloon, Prof. Alexander Charles got his
hydrogen balloon ready. The ascent was scheduled for
the first of December in the year 1783. However, at the
last minute, a police officer intervened and prevented
the distinguished professor from making the flight as it
was too dangerous. When Alexandre Charles tried to insist
on boarding the balloon, the officer ordered his men to
hold him down physically. Acting on the spur of the
moment the professor sent word to the royal court that
if he were not permitted to board the balloon, he would
shoot himself on the spot, "taking the secret of my in-
vention into the grave." Within an hour's time, the royal
sanction came and the balloon, with its eccentric inven-
tor on board, rose majestically into the sky.
COPERNICUS, NICOLAUS
The Polish astronomer and thinker, whose work made
a n invaluable contribution to the birth of science and the
consequent theories that emerged in physics, made pos-

sible the reformation of traditionally held ideas about the
universe and spawned what in retrospect is known as
the Copernican revolution. He studied mathematics, as-
tronomy, law, and medicine at Cracow, Bologna and Padua
and received his doctorate at Ferrara. During the early
stage of his career, Copernicus became aware of serious
defects in the Ptolemaic system that he had learned as a
student, which years later led to his final work in as-
tronomy. In the year 1543, his masterpiece, The Revolu-
tion of the Heavenly Spheres, was published, bringing the
totality of his revolutionary work in astronomy into the
open.
When the members of the Teutonic Order heard that
Copernicus was trying to prove the falsity of the Ptolemaic
system of planetary motion, they decided to ridicule him.
They hired a number of clowns to go about the villages
and mock his astronomical studies. And then they would
impersonate Copernicus, whom they called a 'crazy priest'.
When Copernicus was told about this by his friends, he
only smiled. "Let them be," he said. "The movement of
the heavenly bodies will be influenced not in the slightest
either by the ridicule or the respect of these foolish men.'
In his sixty-ninth year, after much hesitation,

Copernicus finally decided to have his revolutionary theory
published. Since he was too old to attend to the publica-
tion, he entrusted it to his friend, Tidemann Gysius, the
bishop of Culm. When the book was finally published,
Copernicus was on his death-bed. His body had been
paralysed some weeks earlier. When the book was opened
for him to read, his eyes came to rest on a strange pref-
ace. 'This book', it read, 'is written to present not a sci-
entific fact but a playful fancy.' Copernicus was heart-
broken. He died the same day.
The earliest monument to Copernicus, in St. John's
Church in his native Torun, has a curious inscription
which was copied from a note found in his pocket after
he had died. It goes like this:
I crave not the grace bestowed on Paul
Nor the remission granted to Peter
Only forgive me, I fervently pray
As thou forgavest the crucified thieves.
CRICK, FRANCIS
Biologist (1916-1953)
This British biophysicist and geneticist shared the 1962
Nobel Prize in physiology with Maurice Wilkins and James
Watson for their discovery of the molecular structure of
DNA. Crick originally studied physics at University
College, London but the outbreak of the Second World
War halted his doctoral research. For the next eight
years, from 1939 to 1946, he worked for the British admi-
ralty.
Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize with James
Watson who wrote the famous scientific autobiography
The Double Helix. When the research paper meant for
publication in Nature had to be typed, Watson sought his
sister's help to type out the important thesis. He per-
suaded her by telling her that she was "participating in
perhaps the most famous event in biology since Darwin's

book". This shows in how great esteem he held Francis
Crick.
After the war, he decided to take up biology as a
career. By 1953, he and James Watson had formulated
the complementary double helical structure of the DNA
molecule.
Being a Nobel laureate also means coping with a
deluge of invitations from innumerable institutions, a ritual
that can be quite taxing. Francis Crick devised his own
way of dealing with the demands. He drafted a
standardised check-list that he would have filled. It ran
like this:
Send an autograph
provide a photograph
cure your disease
be interviewed
help you in your project
talk on the radio
appear on the TV
speak after dinner
read your manuscript
deliver a lecture
attend a conference
act as chairman
become an editor
write a book
accept an honorary degree.
CURIE, MARIE (MARJA) SKLODOWSKA and

CURIE, PIERRE
(1867-1934) and (1859-1906)
The two French scientists jointly received the Nobel Prize
for physics in 1903 for their work on radioactivity. Pierre
Curie studied physics at Sorbonne and at the age of nineteen
was appointed a teaching assistant and Director of labo-
ratory instruction at the Paris Faculty of Sciences. In 1880,

with his brother Jacques, he discovered piezoelectricity.
About 1891, Pierre began an investigation of magnetism
at high temperatures], leading subsequently to the dis-
covery of the Curie point, after which further research
led to the formulation of Curie's law.
Marie Sklodowska was born in Poland and moved
to Paris in 1891, where she studied mathematics, physics
and chemistry at Sorbonne. Marie and Pierre were mar-
ried in 1895, drawn togethejr by their mutual interest in
magnetism. After Becquerel discovered that uranium salts
emitted rays that resembled X-rays, the Curies set out to
discover whether there were other substances that emit-
ted such rays. They finally managed to isolate the ra-
dium metal in 1910.
The Curies had two daughters, Joliot and Eve. Joliot
weni on to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry and Eve
became a well-known writer. Pierre was elected to the
Academy of Sciences in 1905, but died a year later in a
tragic accident. Marie Curie was awarded another Nobel
Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry.
When Marja's father asked her what she would like
to do with her life, her response was immediate, "I would
like to to go to Paris to study medicine. Women are

admitted at the university there."
Her father shook his head sadly and said, "There is
nothing better for you, but your elder sister has expressed
the same wish. We cannot afford to send even one of.
you. What shall we do?"
Marja's pretty face grew firm and her pale eyes looked
determined. "Very well, Pronja shall go, I shall stay here
and work to support her. When she is a doctor, she will
help me to follow." More than five long years were to
pass and Marja continued to work as a governess for a
pittance, supporting her sister's studies. Eventually, she
could make it to Paris.
While at Sorbonne, Marie Sklodowska led the life of
a monk. Her residence was a sixth-floor attic, hired at
fifteen francs a month. A crevice in the slanted ceiling
brought in a little bit of light. In the evenings and nights,
it used to be chilly and damp as there was no heater in
the room. Nor was there any running water. Marie's daily
diet used to be bread and tea, with the luxury of an egg
on rare occasions. In the cold winter she would put a
handful of coal into a toy stove and sit in front of it,
doing her equations. One day, during a morning class,
she fainted. When she recovered, they discovered that in
the last twenty-four hours she had eaten nothing but a
few radishes.
After their marriage in 1895, Professor Schuetzenberger
arranged that the Curies might work together in the labo-
ratory. Their mutual devotion to science led Pierre Curie
to remark, "I have got a wife made expressly for me to
share all my preoccupations."
"One of our joys," wrote Marie Curie, "was to go
into our workroom at night; we then perceived on all
sides the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles con-
taining our products. It was really a lovely sight and
always new to us. The glowing tubes looked like faint
fairy-lights."
Only on one occasion did Pierre Curie allow his name

to be presented for distinction. On the insistence of his
s c i e n t i s t friends, he became a candidate for the Academy
of Sciences, only because he knew the post would bring
him a laboratory. Every candidate was expected to visit
the houses of the members of the academy, canvassing
his qualifications,"Curie however found this exercise to
be an inhuman ordeal. As a consequence he found him-
self playing up his opponent's qualifications at the ex-
pense of his own, and so, the academy elected the oppo-
nent.
Wrote Wilhelm Ostwald in his autobiography, "At
my urgent request, I was shown the Curie laboratory, in
which radium had been discovered a short time ago. The
Curies themselves were travelling at that time. To my
great surprise, I found it to be a cross between a horse-
stable and a potato cellar, and if I had not seen the work-
table with the chemical apparatus, I would have thought
it a practical joke."
When the Dean of Sorbonne wrote to Pierre Curie
that the Minister had proposed his name for the Legion
of Honour, he replied: "Please be so kind as to thank the
Minister and inform him that I do not feel the slightest
need of being decorated, but that I am in the greatest
need of a laboratory."
Soon after its discovery, radium was found effective
in the treatment of cancer and was valued at 150,000
dollars a gramme. The home of the Curies was immedi-
ately flooded with friends and well-wishers who urged
upon them the necessity of patenting the process of ex-
tracting radium. But the Curies refused to capitalise on
their discovery. "Radium is an instrument of mercy and
it belongs to the world," they said.
Marie's simple disguise for avoiding recognition was
to remain undisguised. One day an American reporter,
hot on the trail of the elusive Curies, managed to locate
their vacation hideout which was a fishing village off
then discovered that he simply could not see red and

that he could only recognise blue, purple and yellow.
His first paper in the journal of the society was the initial
scientific account of colour blindness, later to be called
Daltonism after him.
On becoming aware of his handicap, he used it to
advantage. When he was to be presented to the King,
etiquette required that he wear the court dress, or his
Oxford robes that were scarlet. Being a Quaker, he was
forbidden to wear scarlet. Fortunately his colour blind-
ness came to his rescue. Wearing a grey coat, he calmly
announced that he had inspected the colour of the robe,
and decided it was scarlet.
Joking about Dalton's colour blindness, a friend wrote
in a letter to him, "I find by your accounts that you must
have very imperfect ideas about the charms that consti-
tute beauty in the female sex; I mean that rosy blush of
the cheeks which you so much admire for being light
blue..."
Having taken to private tutoring in order to meet
his expenses, Dalton would charge each student ten
guineas a year. He even taught at night, charging two
shillings a lesson. "And yet in spite of all this," he wrote
with characteristic humour, "I am not rich enough to
retire."
As a further means to earning some money, Dalton
wrote a book on grammar. The book was both interest-
ing and original. In fact, it was a bit too original for it
had listed, among other things, 'phenomenon' as a mas-
culine noun and 'phenomena' as feminine!
Not many are aware that Dalton's earliest essays in
science were published in The Gentleman's Diary and The
Ladies Diary, to which he was a regular contributor!
Dalton was also the author of a series of essays on
his meteorological investigations. In his preface he wrote
that he had not relied on other books but merely on his
own observations. However, soon after publication of his
book, he discovered that a French scientist had antici-

pated some of his conclusions. This drew a ready smile
from him, with the comment: "I am delighted that two
people, utterly unknown to each other, have arrived in-
dependently at the same knowledge."
When Dalton met Sir Humphrey Davy for the first
time, he remarked, "The principal failing in his character
as a philosopher is that he does not smoke."
With the publication of his atomic theory, Dalton
became one of the most famous men in Europe. Among
the many visitors who came to Manchester to catch a
glimpse of this illustrious man, was the French savant
M. Pelletier. This gentleman had imagined Dalton to be
the wealthiest and the most conspicuous citizen of
Manchester, occupying a handsome suite in a large uni-
versity, like his own College de France or probably the
Sorbonne. But, when he arrived in Manchester, he was
jolted to find scarcely a clue to his whereabouts. After a
long search, however, Pelletier was escorted to an alley
and led into the back room of a shabby little house. He
saw an elderly man peering over the shoulders of a young
boy who was writing something on a slate. "Have I the
honour of addressing Mr Dalton?" asked Pelletier.
"Yes," answered the old man. "Will you kindly sit
down while I put this lad right about his arithmetic?"
One evening an acquaintance by the name of Ransome
called on Dalton to find him sitting with a cat upon his
knee, a newspaper at his elbow and a sculpture made of
plaster at his side. Ransome picked up the sculpture and
observed it carefully before remarking, "I am glad you
have had this likeness made of your features, Mr Dalton.
Posterity will never cease to be grateful for this thought-
fulness on your part."
"But it isn't my likeness you're looking at," replied
Dalton amusedly. "It's Sir Isaac Newton's."
"What a striking resemblance!" exclaimed Ransome.
'Indeed I should call it a miraculous resemblance!"
"No miracle at all," replied Dalton. "You see, my

friend, it was the same mind that moulded the features
for us both."
Dalton had resigned from Manchester College. One
morning, he was walking on a street that passed by the
house of the clergyman Rev. Johns. His wife was stand-
ing by the window and Dalton came over to greet her.
I "Mr Dalton," she said, "how is it that you so sel-
dom come to see us?"
"Why, I don't know," replied Dalton. "But I have a
mind to come and live with you." He then proceeded to
eventually stay at their house for almost thirty years!
When the years went by and Dalton remained un-
married, his friends began to inquire if he had ever thought
of taking a wife. "I haven't the time," he told them. "My
head is full of triangles, chemical processes and electrical
experiments to think of any such nonsense."
Dalton's name was known in all the science acad-
emies of the world. One of these decided to erect a statue
of his in his honour. When completed and shown to him,
he remarked, while gazing at it, "That is the great chem-
ist Dalton. I am only the hollow nonentity of a man."
DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT

This British naturalist revolutionised the understanding
of life by his demonstration of evolution by natural selec-
tion. His theory showed that all living beings, human
beings included, are products of a process of gradual
evolution from more primitive, forms. Darwin's studies
in science began with a reluctant stint at studying medi-
cine at Edinburgh. Two years later, he was sent to Christ's
College in Cambridge to prepare for Holy Orders in the
Church of England as the last resort. This is where he
became acquainted with the Cambridge scientists who
exerted great influence on him and rekindled his self-
esteem. After graduating in 1831, he was recommended

by John Henselow, a professor of botany, to be an un-
paid apprentice on the H.M.S. Beagle. The voyage was a
turning point in the young Darwin's life. The observa-
tions he made while on this trip later provided the basis
for his Theory of Evolution.
Darwin had been working on The Origin of Species,
for twenty years, before it was ready for publication. As
he was about to release his thesis, a strange coincidence
took place. Quite innocent of the fact that Darwin was
ready with a thesis on the subject, his friend in Malaya,
Alfred Russel Wallace, sent him an original paper on the
same subject, with a request to be introduced to the world
as the originator of a new theory of evolution. Darwin
decided to recommend his friend's thesis by abandoning
his own. He said, "I would far rather burn my whole
book than that he or any man should think that I had
behaved in a paltry spirit." It was finally decided that it
could be introduced as a joint work by the two friends.
When Wallace found out, he was quick to outdo Darwin's
generosity by admitting that the singular credit of dis-
covering the origin of species belonged to Darwin. And
thus ended one of the most remarkable controversies in
history—one in which each of the opponents tried to

advance the interests of the other at the expense of his
own glory.
Charles Darwin was doubtful of the success of The
Origin of Species before its publication. While preparing
its final copy for the press, he wrote to John Murray, the
publisher: "I feel bound for your sake and my own, to
say in the clearest terms, that if, after looking over part
of my manuscript, you do not think it likely to have
remunerative sale, I completely and explicitly free you
from your offer."
Charles Darwin had his own typical method of col-
lecting information. He first circulated typed question-
naires, whose answers enabled him to know who pos-
sessed the information he sought. After finding these
individuals, he wrote letter after letters to them with the
lines, 'If it would not cause you too much trouble...' or
'pray add to your kindness...' or 'I fear that you will
think that you have fallen on a most troublesome peti-
tioner', etc.
Even as a child Darwin had an acute sense of obser-
vation that did not falter even when he was in great
danger. One day while he was walking on the ramparts
of the Shrewsbury fort, absorbed as usual in his thoughts,
he suddenly found himself in mid-air having absent-
mindedly stepped off a rather high parapet wall. On
recovering from his brush with death, he made the fol-
lowing observation: 'The number of thoughts which passed
through my head during this very short but sudden and
unexpected fall was astonishing...all of which seemed
hardly compatible with what physiologists have stated
about each thought requiring an appreciable amount of
time."
It took a long time before Darwin's father, an
illustrious physician and doctor, recognised his son's
genius. He considered young Charles a good-for-nothing
loafer, whose sole aim in life was "to mess up the house
with his everlasting rubbish". To put some "old-fash-

ioned common sense" into his head, Dr Darwin sent his
son to a classical school. However, Charles had other
plans. Paying no attention to his teachers, he fixed up a
secret laboratory in the garden. The teachers labelled him
'deranged' and the students nicknamed him 'gas'. The
Headmaster repeatedly called him a 'thoroughly useless
creature' and his father finally had him removed from
the school in sheer disgust!
Darwin's masterpiece on the ancestry of the human
race, a book he compiled soon after returning from his
voyage on the Beagle, reads more like a romantic
adventure than a scientific treatise. Darwin hated eso-
teric verbiage and always strove to make everything clear
and simple. "It is a golden rule," he said, "to always use,
if possible, a short old Saxon word. Such a sentence
as 'so purely dependent is the incipient plant on the
specific morphological tendency' does not sound to my
ears like good mother English; it wants translating. I
think too much pains cannot be taken in making
the style transparently clear and throwing eloquence to
dogs."
When Charles Darwin was visiting the countryhouse
of a friend, the two boys of the family decided to play a
joke on him. So they caught a butterfly, a grasshopper,
a beetle and a centipede, and out of these creatures cre-
ated a strange composite insect by gluing the various
parts carefully together. Then, with their new hybrid bug
kept in a box, they knocked at Darwin's door.
"We caught this bug in a field," they said. "Can you
tell us what kind of bug it is, Sir?"
Darwin looked at the bug and then at the boys, smiling
ever so slightly. "Did you notice whether it hummed
when you caught it, boys?"
Yes," they promptly replied, nudging one another.
"Then," said Darwin, "it's a humbug."
One day Prime Minister Gladstone called upon
Darwin. After he had left, Darwin remarked, "Mr Gladstone

seemed to be quite u n a w a r e that he was a great man,
and talked to me as if he were an ordinary person like
myself."
When this statement of Darwin's was reported to
Gladstone, the latter replied, "My feeling towards Mr Dar-
win was exactly the same as Mr Darwin's towards me."
If out of all the kindly qualities that Darwin pos-
sessed, one were to choose that which would be the keynote
of his character, it was his thoughtfulness for others. Never
would he allow himself to depend on others for fear of
inconveniencing them—a quality he retained till the end.
Shortly before he died at the age of seventy-three,
he visited London for the last time. Just as he was about
to enter the house of a friend, Darwin was seized with a
fainting spell. The friend was not at home, but the butler,
on noticing Darwin's condition, urged him to come in-
side. But Darwin replied, "Please don't trouble yourself.
I shall find a cab to take me home." So saying, the con-
siderate old scientist walked away.
DAVY, SIR HUMPHREY

Chemist (1778-1829)
Davy, the British chemist, isolated sodium and potas-
sium and established the elementary nature of chlorine
and iodine, besides inventing the miner's lamp.
Sir Humphrey Davy, the doyen of British scientists,
had a miserable schooling. There was a particularly ob-
noxious master who delighted in using the cane on young
Davy. It was a very common sight, this thin boy receiv-
ing a chastisement from the master on his rear in full
view of the class. What must have made this recurring
incident particularly hilarious to the spectators was the
teacher singing aloud in tune with the movement of his
cane:
'Now Master Davy, Now Sir I have ye,
No one shall save ye, Good Master Davy.'

Davy was once interested in studying the effects of
nitrous oxide (laughing gas) on himself. He expressed
the results of this experiment on himself in a letter to a
friend as follows: "Davy, of whom it was said by Coleridge
that if he had not been the first chemist, he would have
been the first poet of his age, tried to investigate whether
inhalation of the gas enhanced his poetic qualities. It is
said that it only gave his poems a poor quality."
Davy once collected a group of friends in order to
subject them to the effects of nitrous oxide. The conse-
quence was more than hilarious. One member of the party
started dancing around another in a fit of laughter. A
particularly enterprising young man hit Davy ferociously
on the head. Another member, this time a lady, became
so exhilarated by the gas that she bounded out of the
house, jumped over a large dog in the compound and
leapt over the railing with astonishing speed and alac-
rity. It was with great effort that someone could finally
capture her without any further damage.
Writing about the effects of his experience with ni-
trous oxide, Davy was to confess, "...it raised my pulse
upwards by twenty strokes and made me dance about
the laboratory like a madman."
Davy's scientific career began with his first extended
work that attempted to prove wrong Lavoisier's theory
on heat and light. However, his publication brought him
plenty of scorn and ridicule and since then Davy became
wary of speculation in public. In 1798, he joined the newly
established Medical Pneumatic Institution. Here he pub-
lished his classic work, Researches, Chemical & Philosophi-
cal, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, which established
his scientific reputation. Around 1800, he began a study
of Volta's invention of the Voltaic pile, which had made
electric current available for the first time. Davy was to

establish the electrical nature of chemical affinity that
W a s to become the basis for the work of his protege
Michael Faraday. Davy isolated the metals sodium and

potassium in 1808, and announced the discovery of io-
dine in 1813. He was knighted and married in 1812. His
scientific work thereafter grew sporadic and his most
important work was the invention of the miner's lamp.
DIRAC, PAUL ADRIAN MAURICE

This British theoretical physicist made fundamental con-
tributions to quantum mechanics. He was awarded a share
of the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics for his discovery of
new forms of atomic theory. While at Cambridge, Dirac
was initiated into the emerging theories of quantum physics
when he chanced to attend a lecture by the noted physi-
cist Werner Heisenberg. This was in 1925. Within three
years, Dirac had applied the techniques of relativistic
mechanics to quantum theory. His equations revealed a
curious property that was to change the science of quan-
tum physics in a way that had never been predicted—
they included negative energy states that led him to predict
that the electron has a counterpart in another positively
charged 'anti-particle', which he called the positron. This
narticle was discovered in 1933. Dirac also pioneered the

auantum theory of radiation and worked with Fermi on
the Fermi-Dirac statistical theory. His book, The Principles
of Quantum Physics, which he wrote in 1930, is consid-
ered by physicists as a classic on the subject.
During the question hour following Dirac's lecture
at the University of Toronto, somebody in the audience
asked, "Professor Dirac, I do not understand how you
derived the formula on the top left side of the black-
board."
"This is not a question," Dirac responded. "It is a
statement. Next question, please."
Once Dirac was watching Russian physicist Peter
Kapitza's wife knitting while he was at their home. A couple
of hours after he had left, he was back at their door again,
very excited. "You know, Anya," he said, "watching the
way you were making this sweater, I got interested in the
topological aspect of the problem. I found that there is another
way of doing what you were doing. Moreover, it appears
that these are the only two ways of doing it. One is the
method you were using and the other one is like this..." So
saying, he demonstrated the other way, using his long thin
fingers excitedly. Anya stayed calm and unmoved by this
'other way'. After Dirac had finished his demonstration,
she quietly informed him that this was a rather well-known
technique, called 'purling', which had been known to women
for a considerable time!
Once a student asked Dirac, "What is it that tells
you that your equations are mathematically correct?"
"I check if they are beautiful," replied Dirac. "If they
are, then they must be correct!"
Colleen Taylor Sen who was present at one of the
conferences attended by Dirac has this to say on him, "I
was attending a conference on energy in Fort Lauderdale
and Dirac was one of the several Nobel laureates invited
grace the occasion. He was pointed out to me at a
a r ge and noisy cocktail reception—a frail elderly man
standing all alone and apparently ignored by the other

guests. When I suggested to a colleague that we go and
talk to him, he replied, 'I couldn't. That would be like
talking with God.' But, not being a physicist, I suffered
no such reservations and entered into conversation with
Dirac about G.H. Hardy, his contemporary at Cambridge,
whose Mathematician's Apology I had just finished read-
ing. Dirac told me that Hardy had a picture of Bradman
in his study and asked me if I knew who he was. When
I identified him as a cricket player, Dirac was clearly
surprised that a non-Englishman knew something about
cricket and proceeded to describe Hardy's fondness for
cricket and how he used to bowl on the lawns of Cam-
bridge. He then reminisced about other Cambridge con-
temporaries, including Wittgenstein, of whom he com-
mented, 'Awful fellow. Never stopped talking.' Dirac
actually became quite effusive, and talked with me for
an hour or so."
DUMAS, J.B.A.
French chemist (1800-1884)
Dumas devoted his research work in chemistry to the
understanding of chemical phenomena and by teaching
to students, propagated his love for the subject among
others. Dumas, when seventy-nine, once said, "I have
seen many phases of life, I have moved in imperial circles,
I have been Minister of State but if I had to live my life
again, I would always remain in my laboratory, for the
greatest joy of my life has been to accomplish original
scientific work, and, next to that, to lecture to a set of
intelligent students."
One of his students was Louis Pasteur. As a young
student of twenty, Pasteur has written: "I attend at
Sorbonne the lectures of Dumas, a celebrated chemist.
You cannot imagine what a crowd of people come to
attend these lectures. The room is immense, and always
quite full. We have to be there half an hour before the

time to get a good place, as you would in a theatre...s'ix
or seven hundred people are always gathered there."
EDDINGTON, SIR ARTHUR STANLEY

Astronomer-physicist (1882-1944)
Eddington was the first British astronomer and physicist
to explain the dynamics of transport of energy from the
interior of a star to its surface. Eddington became Plunian
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge at the age of twenty-
five, and in the following year, became Director of the
Cambridge observatory, holding both these positions until
his death. He was knighted in 1930 and awarded the
Order of Merit in 1938. His three great scientific publica-
tions are: Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Uni-
verse (1914), The Internal Constitution of the Stars (1926)
and The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923). He was a
prolific writer and also published many popular works
that included Space, Time & Gravitation, Stars & Atoms
and the more philosophical, The Nature of the Physical
World and Philosophy of Physical Science. Eddington is also
remembered for his attempts at observation of the de-
flection of starlight around the sun in 1919. Later he at-
tempted to unify the theory of relativity and quantum
theory and to derive values of physical constants, such
as the gravitational constant and the mass of the elec-
tron, entirely by theoretical means.
Once Eddington was coming out of the Conference
Hall with a scientist friend, who remarked, "Sir, we
understand there are only three persons who understand
Einstein's relativity theory fully."
Eddington did not reply but looked pensive. The
scientist friend continued, "Sir, for a well-deserved praise,
one need not be modest."
Eddington then replied, "I am just wondering who
is the third person!"
Eddington, a staunch idealist, once told the biolo-

gist Haldane, a committed materialist, that "all material-
ists must think of their wives as differential equations."
Haldane then took up the matter seriously with a physi-
cist friend. The latter (a happily married man) told him
that he would not love his wife if he did not believe she
was a differential equation. When a confused Haldane
asked him to explain, the friend replied that he loved his
wife because she had a 'definite character7 unlike a dif-
ferential equation, which "renders her conduct intelligible
even when it's surprising."
In the course of his now legendary lecture, on 'Stars
and Atoms' at the Oxford Union in 1926, Eddington was
displaying a slide of the track left behind by an alpha
particle in a cloud chamber. A technician had acciden-
tally left a thumb mark on the plate, as clearly visible as
the track itself. Unperturbed, Eddinton went on to ex-
plain that the photograph was not of the alpha particle
itself, but of the track it left behind, similar to the thumb
mark left behind by the thumb. This was a marvellous
example of Eddington's quick-wittedness, and even the
great J.C. Growther, who was in the audience, was con-
vinced that the thumb mark was intentional.
Once when asked, how many people Eddington
thought would understand what he was writing, there
was a long pause before his reply, "Seven." Nobody could
quite tell who these privileged seven were.
EDISON, THOMAS ALVA

Inventor-industrialist (1847-1931)
American inventor and pioneer industrialist, the self-edu-
cated Edison achieved the status of a folk-hero by be-
coming one of the really great inventors of all time with
more than a thousand American patents to his name.
Three of his inventions—the phonograph, the electric bulb
and the moving picture camera—went on to completely
transform societies all around the world. Edison learnt

telegraphy at the age of sixteen, and roamed the mid-
West for the next four years as an operator, dreaming of
becoming an inventor. His first invention, an electric vote
recorder, was patented in 1869, but it didn't sell. He then
made certain improvements on a stock ticker and had
them patented, but that didn't sell either. He then de-
cided that he would never attempt to invent anything
that did not have a commercial demand for it. This was
to become his motto for the rest of his life. From these
beginnings, he went on to become one of the greatest
inventors of all time.
Thomas Edison once found himself in a boring so-
cial gathering. He decided to slip out and had almost
reached the door when his host caught up with him and
said, "It is a great honour that you are with us today.
And by the way what are you working on now?"
Pat came the reply, "On my exit!"
He once remarked, while referring to a newspaper
article that called him a scientist, "That's wrong, I am
not a scientist. I am an inventor. Faraday was a scientist.
He didn't work for money, he said he hadn't the time.
But I do. I measure everything I do by the size of a silver
dollar. If it doesn't come up to that standard, then I know

it's no good."
Born into a family that had gone bankrupt, the young
Edison worked as a newspaper and candy salesman on
the Grand Trunk Railway when he was twelve years old.
His interest in science however continued unabated and
a small laboratory that he had made in his cellar, was
shifted to the baggage car of the train, where he worked
when he was not required to work as salesman. All his
reading was carried out in the Public Library in Detroit
where he had to wait it out for the return journey!
His fortune changed when he arrived penniless in
New York in 1869. He visited Law's Gold Indicator Com-
pany, where he was asked to study the instruments that
transmitted changes in gold prices to subscribers and to
sleep in the battery room. His big chance came one day
when the central transmitter broke down. Edison was
quick to spot the trouble and had the device running
within two hours. He found employment for US$ 300. A
year later, he received US$ 40,000 from the management
for improvements on his stock-ticker invention.
Thomas Edison was once working on his electric
lamp when a New York journalist Michels approached
him about the launching of a new science journal called
Science. Edison immediately agreed to become a financial
backer and kept pouring money into the magazine. After
having invested close to US$ 10,000, when the magazine
showed no signs of fetching any returns, he pulled out
of it. Significantly, when Science carried an article on him,
no mention was made of the financial support he had
extended.
One day Henry Ford and Thomas Edison called on
Luther Burbank, who asked them to write their names in
his guest register. It had three columns: one for 'home
address', the second for 'occupation' and the third one
was entitled 'interested in'. Edison quickly filled in the
first two, and in the final column wrote, 'everything'!
Mary Stilwell, who had joined the Edison laborato-

ries, was a capable and valuable assistant. One day, in
the midst of a new experiment, Edison stopped and looked
at her, "Mary...!"
"Well, what is it Al?" asked Mary.
Edison took out a coin from his pocket and tapped
out a message in Morse code on the edge of his desk:
H A V E BEEN T H I N K I N G M U C H A B O U T Y O U L A T E L Y S T O P
WILL Y O U M A R R Y M E QUERY.
Mary blushed. Then she tapped out the answer:
T H A T W O U L D M A K E M E V E R Y HAPPY.
Edison had a beautiful summer residence and one
day he was showing his guests around, pointing out all
the labour-saving devices on the premises. Turning back
towards the house, it was necessary to pass through a
turnstile which led on to the main path. The guests soon
discovered that it took considerable force to get through.
"Mr Edison," asked one of the guests. "How is it that
with all these wonderful modern things around, you still
maintain such a heavy turnstile?"
Said Edison, his eyes full of merriment, "Well, you
see, everyone who pushes the turnstile around, pumps
eight gallons of water into the tank on my roof!"
Edison had been involved in one of the processes of
sub-dividing an electric current. A patent suit arose sub-
sequently over the matter. The famous English physicist
Tyndall was called upon to testify. He mentioned that he
had followed the same course taken by Edison and had
hesitated before the final step that now seemed so child-
ishly clear.
One of the attorneys demanded, "If the next step
was so obvious, why did you not take it?"
"Because," replied Tyndall, "I am not Thomas Alva
Edison."
"Results!" exclaimed Edison to an assistant dismayed
by the bewildering number of his failures. "Results? Why
man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know fifty thousand
things that won't work."
EHRLICH, PAUL
Bacteriologist (1854-1915)
Ehrlich, the German bacteriologist and immunologist,
shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1908 for his con-
tributions to the understanding of immunity. He did
pioneering work in the fields of haematology and che-
motherapy. He was the first to demonstrate the staining
properties of the tubercle bacillus. In 1890, Ehrlich was
invited by the German bacteriologist Robert Koch to join
the staff of the newly created Institute for Infectious Dis-
eases in Berlin. There he perfected a method for
standardising the dose strength for the newly developed
diphtheria antitoxin, thus effecting one of the first appli-
cations of bacteriology in medicine. Later he turned to
studies in chemotherapy, which led him to discover
salvarsan, a 'magic bullet', against syphilis micro-organ-
isms, that was first used successfully in 1910.
As a schoolboy of fourteen, Paul Ehrlich, when asked
to write on the rhetorical and romantic theme, 'Life—a
Dream', wrote: "Life may well be a dream, but dreams
are, in fact, a chemical process, a kind of cerebral phos-
phorescence and therefore have none of the romantic
quality that those who know nothing about chemistry
might expect." This essay upset his teachers sufficiently
to fail him, despite all his innocent protests.
As a young student, Paul Ehrlich was once deeply
engrossed in his work at his bench in Breslan University
laboratory, when his professor, accompanied by a stranger,
came in. The professor pointed to Ehrlich and said, "That
is little Ehrlich, who is very good at staining, but will
never pass his examination."
'Little' Ehrlich not only passed his examination, but
aftersome years,was to collaborate with the same stranger
in a work of great significance. The stranger was none
other than Robert Koch.
EINSTEIN, ALBERT
One of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time, Einstein
is best known as the creator of the Theory of Relativity,
although the Nobel Prize he was awarded was for his
work on the photoelectric effect. In 1905, he published
four invaluable papers in a physics journal. Later he
revealed that it took him only five weeks to write his
first paper on relativity, in between his work as a clerk.
In 1919, he published his Theory of General Relativity,
that was confirmed experimentally in 1921. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize, the same year.
Einstein was fortunately lecturing abroad in Califor-
nia when Hitler came to power. He was soon appointed
to a permanent post in the newly founded Institute for
Advanced Studies in Princeton. He became an American
citizen in 1941. In his later years, Einstein was increas-
ingly concerned with the social consequences of science.
After the war ended, he worked prominently as a pacificist.
Einstein was invited to become the President of Israel in
1952, but refused as he wished to keep away from poli-
tics. He died in Princeton three years later.
Einstein had an unhappy schooling and was always

in trouble with his teachers. One day, one of them sum-
moned him and said, "Albert, I must insist that you stop
asking questions in my classes. I have no answers for
them and the students are losing their respect for me. It
seems to me that, should you decide to leave this school,
it might be a very good idea."
An extremely poor student, Einstein encountered great
difficulty in finding a job. He was finally appointed as a
clerk in the Patents Office at Bern, where his job was to
put applications for patents in a clear form. That was the
year 1902. Einstein was rather happy at his clerical job in
the Patents Office since he could easily finish a whole
day's work in two or three hours leaving him time for
other work. Whenever anyone walked in, he would
nonchalantly and with an air of efficiency, slip his
scribblings, usually equations, into a file in his desk
drawer!
Einstein's proposal to Mileva Maria began by his
saying, "I have been trying to solve the problem of space
and time..." Although why he married her was a mys-
tery as he was unhappy from the very beginning. Even
after earning recognition for his Theory of Relativity, his
domestic life was pathetic. Said one of his colleagues,
who visited him at his house in Bern, "The door of the
apartment was open to allow the floor, which had just
been scrubbed, as well as the washing hung up in the
hall, to dry. I entered Einstein's room. With one hand, he
was calmly rocking a cradle; in his mouth he had a very
bad cigar, and in the other hand, an open book. And the
stove was smoking horribly."
A newspaper artist once made a hasty sketch of
Einstein aboard a ship. When it was ready, he showed it
to Einstein and demanded an autograph. Einstein hesi-
tated. He particularly disliked these absurd sketches, but
loved to write comic verse and could not resist the idea
that then occurred to him. Borrowing the reporter's fountain
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Copyright(C) by Foxit Software Company,2005-2008
ANECDOTES
For Evaluation Only.FROM THE LIVES OF SCIENTISTS 71
pen, he wrote, "This fat, well-sated pig you see, Profes-

sor Einstein purports to be."
The queen of Belgium once invited Einstein to visit
her. Little did the scientist think that important officials
would be waiting at the station to receive him. Alighting
quietly from the train, he proceeded on foot with a suit-
case in one hand and a violin, in the other. The dignitar-
ies in the meanwhile had driven back to the palace. Soon
after, a grey haired man appeared tramping up the road.
After receiving him, the Queen asked, "Why didn't you
use the car I sent for you, Herr Doktor?"
The distinguished guest gave a gentle smile and said,
"It was a very pleasant walk, Your Majesty."
Once Einstein climbed a ladder to change the pic-
ture on the wall. Lost in a train of thoughts, his foot
slipped and he fell to the floor. Quickly recovering from
the fall, he took out a paper and pen and began working
out the causes of the fall. Like the fall of the apple in
Newton's garden, this incident led Einstein to restruc-
ture the Theory of Gravitation.
His theory of bending of light had been proved right
to the exact decimal point, during the eclipse of 1919.
When Einstein received the photographs, he viewed them
with a twinkle in his eyes. "Now that my Theory of
Relativity has been proved true," he chuckled, "Germany
will claim me as a German and France will declare that
I am a citizen of the world. Had my theory been proved
false, France would have said that I was German and
Germany would have declared that I was a Jew."
On being asked to explain the Theory of Relativity,
Einstein said, "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an
hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot
stove for a minute and it will seem like more than an
hour. That is relativity."
One evening a young lady introduced her fiance to
the pastor of her church. The next day, the pastor met the
lady and gently took her aside. "I approve of your young
man in every respect save one," he told her. "He lacks a

sense of humour. I asked him to explain to me Einstein's
Theory of Relativity and he actually tried to do it."
George Gershwin, the noted American composer, was
once discussing the Einsteinian theory. "Imagine," began
George, "working for twenty years on an idea and then
being able to write it down in three pages!"
Retorted the senior Gershwin, "It was probably in
very small print."
When the Nazis found out that Einstein was not
going to return home from the USA, they were enraged
and they plundered and ransacked his house, confiscat-
ing all his bank documents. They also put a prize of US$
1,000 on Einstein's head. When he heard of this, Einstein
remarked, "I did not know it was worth so much."
Once, while riding a street-car in Berlin, Einstein
told the conductor that he had not given back the right
change. The conductor counted the change again and
finding it to be correct, handed it back, saying, 'The trouble
with you is you don't know figures."
While he was living in Berlin, the English painter
and writer Sir William Rothenstein did Einstein's por-
trait. During the sittings, the artist found a 'solemn look-
ing individual' quietly sitting in the corner of the room
and occasionally nodding or shaking his head in response
to what Einstein said to him. At the end of the sittings,
Sir William asked the scientist about the man's identity
and was told, "That's my mathematician. He examines
problems which I put before him and checks their valid-
ity. You see, I am not a good mathematician myself."
Jacob Epstein, the sculptor, once narrated, "When I
was doing Albert Einstein's bust, he had many jibes at
the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned
his Theory of Relativity in a new book. 'Were I wrong,'
Einstein had remarked, 'one professor would have been
enough'."
When the Einsteins arrived in America, reporters
swarmed and crowds milled around them as their ship

berthed. Bits of paper and streamers became tangled in
Einstein's hair but he took no notice, as he answered the
questions fired at him. "How do you like the States?"
"I have not seen it yet."
"How long will you remain?"
"I do not know yet."
"Can you explain the Theory of Relativity in one
sentence?"
"No."
"Why are women so excited about the Theory of
Relativity?" (Laughter).
"Because women like a new fashion every year and
this year it is the Theory of Relativity."
Another time he was asked, "Do you think a college
education is really necessary? Cannot all information be
found in books?"
To which Einstein replied, "I myself do not burden
my memory with simple facts that can be looked up in
text-books. But the true purpose of education is to train
the mind to think. For that reason it is priceless."
Churchill Eisenhart, son of the former Dean of
Princeton University, tells of a telephone call to the Dean's
office. The caller said, "Perhaps you could direct me to
where Dr Einstein lives." Since it had been agreed that
Einstein was to be protected from inquisitive callers, the
request was politely refused. The voice on the other end
dropped to a whisper and continued, "Please do not tell
anybody, but I am on my way home and have forgotten
where my house is."
Einstein regularly went on lecture tours. Once his
second wife Elsa carefully packed his suitcase and warned
him, "The black suit is to be worn on the evening you
make your speech. Don't forget. Put on the clean shirt,
tie and please, please, the socks!" He dutifully nodded.
On his return, Elsa found the suitcase untouched.
Einstein smiled ruefully, "I guess I forgot...but then, they
came to hear what I had to say and not to see whether

I was fashionably dressed, isn't that so?"
Once after a successful talk in Prague, Einstein was
asked to say a few words to the specially invited group.
He answered, "It would perhaps be more understand-
able and more enjoyable if I were to play for you in-
stead." He brought out his violin and proceeded to play
Mozart sonatas to a small and highly appreciative audi-
ence.
While he was in Japan, he was greatly impressed by
the audience sitting motionless for hours, listening in a
language they did not fathom/about a subject they did
not understand. After one lecture had dragged on for
over four hours, Einstein resolved to make his next one
shorter, out of pity for his patient listeners. That evening,
his hosts were very quiet and reproached him, "The people
of our city feel insulted. Your lectures in the other cities
lasted four hours; to us you spoke only for two hours!"
A socialite, who was determined to entertain Albert
Einstein, found to her dismay that he had engagements
for almost the whole of the week. "What a shame," she
said. "But may be, on Friday evening you're free."
"On Friday evening," Einstein patiently told her, "I've
promised to go to the observatory with my friend
Dr Michelson to look through the telescope."
The lady, however, persisted. "But you know how it
rains in California, and it may rain on Friday evening.
Then, as you won't be able to see the stars, you can
surely accept my invitation."
Einstein smiled broadly. "It won't rain," he said
positively. "Michelson has arranged for that!"
The Badehalle was packed for a discussion on rela-
tivity. Lenard began speaking first and, in the words of
Dr Freidrich Dessaner, who was sitting on Einstein's left,
"He (Einstein) wanted to take notes, but as one would
expect of him, he had no pencil. He asked for mine so
that he could reply clearly and convincingly to Lenard's
objections. As a minor joke, Einstein has my pencil to

this day. At least he never returned it to me; what has
come from it is probably more intelligent than it would
have been if I had got it back."
Though he never had any desire whatsoever for
awards or recognition, Einstein never doubted that he
would eventually be given one. He went so far as to
include the anticipated Nobel honorarium in the divorce
settlement he agreed to in 1919. The award came two
years later!
A little schoolgirl was having some difficulty with
her homework in arithmetic. She had heard that, close to
her house, there stayed a very famous mathematician
who was also a very good man. She went to him and
asked him to help in the homework. The old man was
very helpful and explained everything patiently. "It was
easier to understand then than when our teacher explained
it in school," said the girl to her mother later. This old
'mathematician' happened to be none other than Einstein.
When the child's mother heard of this, she immedi-
ately went over to his house to apologise for the incon-
venience. But the old man who welcomed her in, replied,
"You don't have to apologise. I have certainly learnt more
from the conversation with the child than she did from
me."
The so-called Society of Patriotic Women lodged a
protest with the American government against Einstein's
entry into America as a pacificist, claiming that he nursed
communist aspirations. In a letter to the American con-
sulate in Berlin, Einstein wrote: "I have never been re-
pulsed with such energy by the members of the fair sex
at my first advance, or if it ever happened, it was never
by so many at the same time. But are not these vigilant
citizens perfectly right? Why open their gates to an indi-
vidual who devours capitalists with the same appetite as
the Minotaur in Crete who devoured the ravishing Greek
V l r gins, and to make the matter worse was vile enough
to reject any idea of war with the exception of the inevi-

table war with his own wife? In consequence, do not
ignore the advice of your patriotic women. Remember
that Rome was once saved by the cackling of a few zeal-
ous geese."
Once while sailing, Einstein ran aground on a sand-
bank where he was later found by a boy in a boat. "What
is the matter, mister?" called out the boy.
"It's too shallow for me to get off until the tide comes
in," replied Einstein.
"Shall I get a bigger boat than mine to shove you
off? The tide won't be in for about four hours," said the
boy.
"No, thank you," was Einstein's reply.
"And what will you do with yourself for four hours?"
Einstein calmly replied, "I shall have a nice time—
I shall sit quietly and think."
The Einsteins had become weary of all the fuss over
them by the time they were on the last lap of their travel
abroad. Complained Elsa, "It's easy enough for you to
be patient. You are a famous man. If you make a mistake
in etiquette, it is overlooked. But the newspapers don't
leave me alone. Just because I am near-sighted, they
reported that last night I ate the green leaves of the flow-
ers at my plate instead of my salad."
A wealthy industrialist once sent a 'Guarnerius' vio-
lin valued at $ 30,000, which was duly returned with the
modest note: "This valuable instrument should be played
by a true artist. Please forgive me, I am used to my old
violin."
Einstein was certainly, in a way, the last of the clas-
sical physicists. This most radical of thinkers, who with
his Theory of Relativity completely transformed earlier
conceptions of space, time and matter, could never rec-
oncile himself to the new quantum theory, objecting to
its emphasis on probability. Writing in a letter to Born,
Einstein expressed his feelings strongly: "I find the idea
quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation

should choose of its own free will, not only its moment
to jump off, but also its direction. In that case, I would
rather be a cobbler or even an employee in a gaming
house than a physicist."
Einstein was deep in discussion about the merging
theory of quantum physics with Niels Bohr when they
reached a point where Einstein was cornered. He exclaimed,
"God does not play dice."
Bohr, who was equally upset, yelled back, "Stop telling
God what to do."
Asked one day for a mathematical formula for suc-
cess in life, Einstein gave the following one, "If A is success
in life, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z, X
being work and Y being play.
"And what is Z?" he was promptly asked.
"Keeping your mouth shut," was the reply.
The Saturday Review once posed the question, 'What
have I learned?' to a few distinguished persons.
Quite different from all the others, Einstein had three
characteristic answers: "One, pay close attention to the
curiosities of a child; this is where the search for knowl-
edge is freshest and most valuable. Two, the advent of
nuclear energy has changed everything about the world
except our way of looking at it. And three, my ideas
caused people to re-examine Newtonian physics; it is
inevitable that my own ideas will be re-examined and
supplanted. If they are not, there will have been a great
failure somewhere."
Once the Mark Twain Society offered Einstein the
post of honorary vice-president. When he found out that
the same society had once offered a similar honour to
Mussolini, he flatly rejected it.
Einstein was once offered a hand-pulled rickshaw to
take him through some narrow streets, but he firmly
refused, "Never would I use another human being as an
animal and permit him to carry me about."
Disgusted with the state of world affairs and the grow-

ing violence, Einstein went on a trip to the Orient. When he
was in Japan, he refused to participate in any of the ceremo-
nies that had been put up in his honour. Instead, he spent
a lot of time with the Japanese children. He accepted the
drawings they drew for him and listened joyously to their
talk. "In the children lies the hope of the world," he said.
'They must never be brought up to hate. They must never
abuse the hard-won achievements of the human race." And
he turned to the litle ones and said, "Let us hope that your
generation will put mine to shame."
At the height of his fame, Einstein's name was on
eveyone's lips. Simple and unassuming, he disliked the
adulation and adoration showered upon him. He would
often exclaim vexedly, "Everybody talks about me and
nobody understands me!"
Gilbert Murray once caught sight of Einstein sitting
with a far-away look on his face. The far-away thought
behind the far-away look was evidently a happy one, for
at that moment, his countenance assumed a serene ex-
pression. "Dr Einstein, do tell me what you are think-
ing," pleaded Murray.
\ am thinking," replied Einstein, "that after all, this
is a very small star."
ENDERS, JOHN FRANKLIN

Microbiologist (1897-1985)
This American virologist shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in
medicine with two other Americans—Thomas Weller and
Fredrick Robbins—for their discovery of the ability of the
polio viruses to grow in cultures of different types of
tissues. This discovery enabled scientists to grow the polio
virus in quantities that made it possible for the manufac-
ture of the first polio vaccine. After completing his doc-
torate on the condition of extreme hypersensitivity, he
joined Harvard University and worked on the growth of
herpes viruses. In 1948, he and his co-workers turned to

the polio virus. At that time it was generally believed
that the poliomyelitis virus could only live in nerve cells.
Enders doubted it and successfully proved that it was
not neurotropic, and through painstaking research, ob-
served the growth of the virus in other tissue cultures.
Later in 1954, he also isolated the measles virus, which
made it possible for developing the measles vaccine.
Enders was a banker's son, who served as a fighter
pilot in the First World War. After the war, he went to
Yale where he received his graduation in English in 1919.
After that he became a real estate businessman! He then
went back to study at Harvard for graduation in English
literature. In 1930 he switched over to microbiology, where
he received his doctorate in bacteriology and immunol-
ogy-
When Enders, Weller and Robbins, who jointly won
the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1954, were asked what
they felt about their success, each one of them responded
differently. The reaction of Robbins, the youngest of the
three, was immediate. "It was all very simple," he re-
plied. The middle-aged Weller called it a "fortuitous
circumstance". Enders, the oldest of the lot, had a far-
away look in his eyes as he softly muttered, "I guess we
were foolish for so long in the beginning..."
EUCLID
Mathematician (365 B.C.-300 B.C.)
The Greek mathematician wrote the book, Elements, which
is the oldest Greek mathematical work to have survived.
His work on geometry was regarded as a model of logi-
cal reasoning until the 20th century. Very little is known
about the life of Euclid and he is often confused with
Euclid of Megara, the Socratic philosopher. There is a
school of thought which believes that Euclid was taught
b y Plato's successors in Athens and that he taught in
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AND SCIENTISTS
Alexandria. The first printed version of Elements appeared

in 1482, in Latin. The first English translation was
published in 1570. Among his other surviving works is
Optics, in which Euclid wrote that the basis of vision is
the emission of rays from the eyes that travel to the objects
of sight.
When Euclid was told by his fellow-professors at
Alexandria that there was no way of measuring the
height of the great pyramid, he merely smiled. He then
proceeded to measure it as follows: at the precise time
when the length of his shadow was exactly equal to his
height, he measured the length of the pyramid's
shadow. "This, gentlemen, is the exact height of the great
pyramid."
Ptolemy, the King of Alexandria, once expressed his
impatience at the elaborate manner in which Euclid ex-
plained his theorems. "Isn't there," asked the King, "a
shorter way of learning geometry than your method?"
"Sire," replied Euclid, "in our country, there are two
kinds of roads—the hard road for the common people
and the easy road for the royal family. But in geometry
all must go the same way. There is no royal road to
learning."
On occasions, the gentle and kindly Euclid could be

quite sarcastic. Once during class, a student put to him
a question just after he had learned his first theorem.
"Can you tell me just what is the practical advantage in
studying geometry?"
Upon hearing this, Euclid turned to his servant and
said, "Give this gentleman some money; he cannot learn
without money."
Shy and aloof, Euclid cared little for petty politics
and military glory. A little before his death, he once said,
"These things shall pass. But the designs of the heavenly
stars shall remain eternally fixed."
FARADAY, MICHAEL
Physicist-chemist (1791-1867)
Faraday, the British physicist and chemist, discovered
the relationship between electricity and magnetism, thus
laying the foundations of a new world of electric power.
He also created the science of electrochemistry and was
the principal architect of the classical Field Theory that
was subsequently developed by James Clerk Maxwell
and Albert Einstein. Faraday's insights into experimental
science made him one of the greatest experimental scien-
tists of all time.
Faraday was born in a deeply religious family be-
longing to the orthodox Sandemanian sect, and his for-
mal education was limited to the elements of reading
and writing. His knowledge of mathematics was rudi-
mentary in the least, but according to Faraday, it was
precisely the lack of mathematical knowledge that al-
lowed him to develop the Field Theory. In 1805, he be-
came an apprentice to a bookseller and bookbinder. That
is where he read all the books he wanted to. Faraday's
interest in science was the result of reading an article on
electricity in an article in an encyclopaedia. Before long,
he had developed his first instrument—an electrostatic
generator out of old glass bottles.

Farday's scientific career began in 1813 as a labora-
tory assistant to Humphrey Davy (refer to anecdotes for
details). In 1825, he succeeded Davy as Director of the
laboratory. On 29 August 1831, he found that currents
could be induced by making or breaking an electric cir-
cuit and its accompanying electromagnetic field, thus
discovering electromagnetic induction. A few weeks later,
he found that when he plunged a permanent magnet
into a coil of wire, electric current was generated. This
was the world's first generator. Two weeks later, he
succeeded in getting a steady current by rotating a cop-
per disc between permanent magnets, which was the
world's first dynamo. Faraday was elected a member of
the Royal Society in 1824, but declined further honours,
including a knighthood and presidency of the society.
Michael Faraday was the son of an ordinary village
blacksmith. As a child he showed no signs of his future
genius, and spent most of his time 'watching sunsets'. A
defect in his speech brought him ridicule and abuse from
his teacher—an old maid who hated children. Once she
decided to resort to blows and beckoned his brother Robert,
who was in the same class, to her desk. She gave him a
half-penny and ordered him to buy a cane announcing
that she wanted to give Michael a public flogging. But
Robert had other ideas. He chucked the coin out of the
window and ran home to report the matter to his mother.
Mrs Faraday decided to take both boys out of the school.
That was the end of Michael Faraday's education!
Unable to make a living in the Surrey village of
Newington Butts, Michael's father moved his family to
London, in the hope of finding work. However, their
fortunes remained very much the same. One of Michael
Faraday's strongest memories of that time was about his
weekly ration. It used to be a loaf of bread a week, which
his mother allowed him to ration out for himself. Michael
used to get the loaf on Monday, which he then carefully
divided into fourteen portions—two per day,, one for break-

fast and one for dinner. Reminiscing this, Faraday later
mentioned that it was through this 'careful management',
no doubt excellent training for a scientist, that he never
went 'altogether hungry'.
While he apprenticed to a shopkeeper, one of the
customers gave Faraday tickets to a series of lectures by
the legendary Humphrey Davy, the then Director of the
Royal Institution's laboratory. Faraday was so inspired
by the lectures, he took careful notes, rewrote them in
his fine hand and made use of his bookbinding training
to bind them handsomely. He then sent these to Davy,
asking for employment. Davy was greatly impressed but
felt bound to consult his colleagues. Their advice was to
"put him to wash bottles: if he is good for anything, he
will do it directly; if he refuses, he is good for nothing."
And so Faraday joined the Royal Institution as a janitor
and from this he rose to become the Director of the in-
stitution!
Beginning his scientific career as a janitor, Faraday
soon found himself being relied upon by Davy. He be-
came a kind of lab assistant, sometimes taking active
part in Davy's experiments. Some of the experiments they
performed were risky and both of them sustained inju-
ries. After one such particularly dangerous experiment,
Faraday wrote to his friend Benjamin Abbot: "...The most
terrible thing was...when a compound of chlorine and
azote exploded. The explosion was rapid as to blow my
hand open...and to tear off a part of my nails...Sir
Humphrey also received several cuts on his hands and
face..." However, the incident hardly deterred either of
these two great men from performing more such experi-
ments!
Once, Sir Humphrey Davy, who was by then con-
vinced of young Faraday's potential, 'a fellow-wanderer'
in Davy's words, 'into regions yet untrod', invited him
to come along as his 'philosophical assistant' on a lecture
tour to Europe. Though the journey proved to be a de-

lightful experience for Faraday, he was somewhat cha-
grined at the unexpected rudeness with which Lady Davy
treated him. Once at Geneva, the three were invited to
dinner at the house of the Genevese philosopher Profes-
sor de la Rive, Recognising Faraday's equality with the
others, his place had been set at the table with the rest of
the party. Lady Davy immediately objected to this, in-
sisting that Faraday was her husband's servant and as
such must be asked to eat with the other servants. Dis-
gusted with her conduct, the host ordered dinner to be
served to Faraday in a separate chamber, as befitted the
dignity of "the lonely young philosopher who lived above
the petty squables of his fellows." Faraday took humili-
ation in his stride, silently and with great dignity. He
used this experience to write somewhere that "the hu-
man mind is a peculiar compound of sublimity and slime."
It is perhaps tragic that the great Sir Humphrey,
who was solely responsible for 'discovering' Faraday,
launched a bitter tirade against him in his later years.
The reason for this was Davy's prized invention, the miner's
safety lamp, which the latter had claimed would never
explode. The parliamentary committee that was examin-
ing the hazards of the British mines asked Faraday to
give his opinion on Davy's lamp. Characteristic of him,
Faraday gave his honest opinion about the lamp, declar-
ing it to be unsafe. He deeply felt that the life of the
miners was far more important than the honour of his
teacher. Davy, however resented this, and questioned
the competence of Faraday, whom he called a 'young
upstart' to comment upon the work of his master. Davy
laboured a grudge against Faraday for the rest of his life
and got his revenge by casting a negative casting vote
against him in the elections of the Royal Society, of which
he was the president. And yet, Faraday never bore any
grudge against Davy. Years after Davy's death, Faraday
was once chatting with Jean Dumas in the library of the
Royal Institution. Suddenly, rising from his chair, he walked

up to Davy's portrait on the wall and said in a voice that
trembled with emotion, 'There, my friend, was a great
man."
A few days after he had discovered the basic prin-
ciples of the electric generator and the dynamo, Michael
Faraday was explaining about them to a group of distin-
guished persons, including Prime Minister Gladstone.
Before he could finish, Gladstone interrupted, "But, after
all, of what use is it?"
Faraday scratched his head and said simply, "Why,
Sir, there is every probability that you will be able to tax
it."
Every day after finishing work, Faraday would watch
the sunset with his wife, a practice he continued till the
end of their days together. He would hold her hand in
his and sit quietly in front of the twilit sky, watching the
day sail into the darkness of the night. "How old and
how beautiful is this figure of resurrection!" he once
remarked.
By the year 1857, Faraday had arrived at the fore-
front of scientific achievement. But his dislike for titles
and honours did not change. When the great Professor
Tyndall offered him the presidency of the Royal Society,
calling him 'the most brilliant scientist of his generation',
Faraday refused the honour. "Tyndall," he said, "I must
remain plain Michael Faraday to the last." And that is
precisely what he did.
A few years before his death, a young man was sent
down by the Royal Mint to perform an experiment at
Faraday's laboratory. He looked up from his work to
observe an old white-haired man, shabbily dressed, watch-
ing him whimsically. "I suppose," said the young man,
"you've been here for a number of years?"
"Yes," replied the man, "a good many years."
"Sort of a janitor here?" asked the young man again.
"Yes, sort of."
"I hope they pay you well," was the next comment.
To which the old man replied, "I could stand a little
better pay."
"And what, my man, is your name?"
"Michael Faraday."
FERMI, ENRICO
This Italian-American physicist was one of the pioneers
of the nuclear age. He won the Nobel Prize for physics
in 1938, for his work on radio isotopes, and for his dis-
covery of the effectiveness of slow neutrons in produc-
ing radioactivity. Fermi's work culminated with the build-
ing of the first nuclear reactor on 12 December 1942. Fermi
was a brilliant student and had the distinction of com-
pleting his doctoral thesis at the age of twenty-one. He
then went to study at Gottingen University with Max
Born and later in L eiden, the Netherlands, with the physicist
Paul Ehrenfest. In 1926, he made his first major contribu-
tion to physics with his work on the statistical behaviour
of a monoatomic gas, later to be known as 'Fermi gas'.
In 1933, he proposed a radically new theory of electrons,
which later played a major role in the development of
nuclear physics. His postulation of a neutral particle called

'neutrino' was proved right when it was detected for the
first time in 1955. In 1938, Fermi's life took a turn when he
went to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize. There he decided
not to return to Italy, where fascism was directly beginning
to affect him as his wife was Jewish. Instead, the Fermis set
sail for New York, having accepted a professorship of phys-
ics at Columbia University. In 1944-1945, Fermi served as
Associate Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New
Mexico and was awarded the Congressional Medal for Merit
in 1946 and the first annual award of the Atomic Energy
Commission in 1954. As a great honour, the 100th element,
fermium, was named after him.
With his appointment to the Italian Academy in 1929,
Fermi found himself wooed by high state officials, al-
though he usually shunned all public functions. In 1930,
when the Crown Prince of Italy married, Fermi was also
invited to the wedding. He decided to work in his labo-
ratory instead. But to get to it, he had to cross a street on
the processional route that had been closed to traffic and
was being guarded by a line of soldiers. Fermi, driving
his shabby little car and in his usual clothes, was imme-
diately stopped by the soldiers. "I am the chauffeur of
His Excellency Fermi," he said, "and I have to fetch him
for the wedding. Could you please let me cross the lines?"
Whereupon he was promptly led through the lines and
spent the rest of the day at work in the laboratory.
A little-known detail about Enrico Fermi was his
expertise at repairing cars. Once, while he was repairing
a friend's car at a gas station, the owner happened to be
watching. After the car had restarted, he walked over to
Fermi and offered him a job!
Soon after the Second World War, a Hollywood stu-
dio wanted to make a motion picture on the story of the
atomic bomb. A hotel suite in south Chicago was booked
for a conference to which Enrico Fermi, leader of the
team that had devised the first nuclear reactor, and Samuel
Allison, who had played a leading role in the design of

bomb, were invited. After the conference, the producer
insisted upon dropping them to their homes, which were
only a block away, much to the embarrassment of the
two men. They were driven home in a large and flashy
Cadillac, fitted with white-walled tyres. When Fermi's
landlady saw the sight of them alighting from the Cadillac,
she remarked, "Isn't it strange how important you little
men have suddenly become!"
The announcement in 1939 of the discovery of ura-
nium fission in Germany coincided perfectly with Fermi's
migration to the United States. With his associates at
Columbia University, he began painstaking research to-
wards the realisation of the first nuclear chain reaction.
In 1942, this project was moved to the University of
Chicago, where Fermi directed the construction of the
world's first atomic reactor, which was a pile of natural
uranium embedded in layers of graphite. The venue? The
squash court under the stands of the university stadium!
When preparations for the explosion of the first
hydrogen bomb were almost complete, Werner Heisenberg
suggested to Fermi, "It may be biologically dangerous to
explode the bomb."
Fermi agreed, but insisted, "But it is such a beauti-
ful experiment."
FEYNMAN, RICHARD
Physicist (1918- )
Feynman was an American physicist, who shared the
1965 Nobel Prize for physics with Julian Schwinger and
Shinichiro Tomonoga, for his development of the relativ-
istic quantum electrodynamics. Feynman's contribution
was noteworthy for the great simplification of many cal-
culations, using diagrammatic techniques that are known
today as the 'Feynman diagrams'. After receiving his
doctorate from Princeton University, Feynman was in-
vited to join the Manhattan Project, to develop the atomic

bomb at Los Alamos. After that Feynman taught at Cornell
University and later at California Institute of Technol-
ogy, and came to be recognised as an excellent and in-
spiring teacher. His later research included work on liq-
uid helium and the prediction of a 'particle' of energy
which he called the vortex exciton. In 1965, he and Murray
Gell-Mann proposed the current theory of 'weak interac-
tions', and in the 1960s, they went on to hypothesise the
fundamental particle called the quark.
The work on the bomb at the Los Alamos laboratory
was being done in utmost secrecy. The young Richard
Feynman decided to keep the security officials busy. He
instructed his wife to send him letters torn into hun-
dreds of small pieces. The regulations specified that the
officials entrusted with checking correspondence should
read everything that came or left the centre. They had to
painstakingly fit all the fragments of Mrs Feynman's jig-
saw puzzle together!
Feynman had another pastime. He took an impish
delight in figuring out the combination numbers of the
steel safes in which the most important research data
were stored. Once he succeeded in opening the main file
cupboard at the Los Alamos Centre while the officer-in-
charge was absent for a few minutes. He then placed a
scrap of paper in the safe, in which he had written a
cryptic and maddening, "Guess who?"
The official was utterly bewildered and quite unable
to understand how the paper found its way into the
innermost sanctum of the Manhattan Project!
After receiving the Nobel Prize, Richard Feynman,
while returning home decided to visit his school in New
York. On going through the school records he found that
his IQ (intelligence quotient) was shown as being fairly
low. On reaching home his remark to his wife was that
to win the Nobel Prize was of little significance, but the
fact that he had won it despite such a low IQ was some-
thing great!
FLEMING, SIR ALEXANDER

Fleming of Britain discovered penicillin and shared the
Nobel Prize for medicine in 1945 with two other British
scientists, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. Fleming's
interest in the problems of disinfection and antiseptics
started during the First World War. In 1921, he success-
fully isolated and described an antibacterial agent, which
he called iysozyme and which is an enzyme found in tears
and mucus secretions. He continued furthering his work
and in 1928 discovered penicillin. Owing to the inad-
equate chemical means at his disposal at that time, it had
to be twelve years later that enough penicillin could be
obtained and purified for actual use on human beings.
Fleming received several awards and retired as professor
of bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital, London. He was
knighted in 1948.
Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, was
a modest, shy and taciturn Scotsman. When his first wife
Sarah Marion was seriously ill, one of her friends told
her, "You musn't die. What would Alexander do with-
out you?"
"Oh!" she replied, "I'm sure he'll marry again." Then
she added with a smile, "But whoever it is, she'll have to
do the proposing."
Although Fleming had been working for several years
looking for an agent such as penicillin, the actual discov-
ery was itself serendipitous. In 1928, while experiment-
ing with staphylococcus cultures, he noticed that one of
the plates that had been left on a window ledge in his
laboratory was contaminated by a mould. He also no-
ticed that the bacteria had dissolved and failed to grow
in an arep around the mould. Fleming identified the mould
as a species of penicillium.
When King George and Queen Mary were to visit
the laboratories at St. Mary's, Alexander Fleming was
asked to display his 'bench technique'. He did, but sus-
pecting that it might not really interest the distinguished

guests, he also prepared one of his famous bacterial 'rock
gardens' from all the available microbes, producing ex-
traordinary growths in vivid colouring. The story goes
that when the Queen saw this overbearing sight, she
whispered in complete bewilderment to the King, "What
is the use of this?"
Fleming was once forced into an interview in New
York by two journalists just as he was about to have
breakfast. One of them asked eagerly, in a way that only
journalists can, "Sir, what are you thinking about right
now? We wish to know what a great scientist thinks
while getting ready for breakfast."
Fleming mused awhile on the question and then
replied, "I am thinking of something very special," at
which point the journalists eagerly drew themselves for-
ward. "I am thinking, whether to have one egg or two."
FLEMING, JOHN AMBROSE

Physicist-engineer (1849-1945)
The British physicist and engineer, who invented the first
thermionic valve to be used in radios, studied at Cam-
bridge under the tutelage of James Clark Maxwell. John
Fleming was an avid experimenter and practical worker
and took an active part in the practical application of
science. He was an advisor to the Edison, Swan, Ferranti
and other lighting companies in England. He made im-
provements on electric bulbs, meters, generators and
methods of distribution. Fleming was also the scientific
consultant to Marconi's wireless telegraph company,
designing many pieces of early radio apparatus that
Marconi used in making the first radio transmission across
the Atlantic in 1901. Besides teaching and researching,
John Fleming also helped to popularise science through
books, articles and papers. His Memories of a Scientific
Life, combining electrical history with autobiography, is
still considered a classic.
XV111 OF
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SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
A journalist once interviewed Sir Ambrose Fleming

on behalf of an Oxford University Press publication. As
the journalist began, Fleming interrupted him to ask, "How
much do you propose to pay me for this advice?" The
interviewer was taken aback, and before he could muster
up an answer, Fleming added with a twinkle in his eye,
"Why are we scientists always expected to do something
for nothing? Now, if I were a lawyer, there would be a
proper fee, isn't it?"
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
Inventor (1706-1790)
One of the most versatile American personalities ever,
Benjamin Franklin was, at different stages in his life, a
printer, philosopher, diplomat, scientist and inventor. As
a young man, he was deeply influenced by the emerging
sciences and the works of Newton in particular, which
made him reject his father's Calvinist tradition and turn
to 'rational and practical religion', rather than formal
doctrines. Denied any education because of abject pov-
erty, Franklin, like Faraday, became a printer apprentice
at the New England Courant, a Boston newspaper. He went
to England in 1724, where he worked as a master printer

and returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to buy his own
press. He also became clerk at the Pennsylvania Assem-
bly and postmaster of Philadelphia.
Among his famous scientific experiments, Franklin
invented the Pennsylvania fireplace (later called the
Franklin stove), an ingeniously energy-efficient heating
device. He then turned to electricity and in 1751, began
to test whether lightning was a form of electricty. This
was confirmed a year later in the famous kite-experi-
ment. He then invented the lightning rod, which soon
appeared on buildings all over the world. He also in-
vented bi-focal lenses and the harmonica.
Benjamin Franklin went to the French Royal Court
as the American envoy. Just before he was to present his
credentials, his head was found to be too big for the
official wig used on such occasions. Franklin remained
unmoved and went to the court mumbling something
about being from the backwoods. The word got around
and he found himself being greeted by all present as 'the
child of nature from the backwoods'.
While Franklin was in France, a balloon ascent was
being attempted from the Champs de Mars on a rainy
day in 1783. Franklin was standing among the crowd of
people who had come to watch the event. A dispirited
sceptic in the crowd turned to him and muttered, "What
on earth is the use of the balloon?"
Franklin shot back in his characteristic American way,
"Well, what is the use of a new-born baby?"
While working as an apprentice in the New England
Courant, Franklin, who had had almost no education
whatsoever, began reading every word that came into
the shop. He then began writing clever pieces for the
paper that satirised what he referred to as the 'Boston
Establishment'. And he signed the articles as 'Silence
Dogood'!
Franklin exemplified the Puritan ethic by philoso-
phising about earning a good living. His Poor Richard's

Almanac , which became a bestseller in North America,
carried simple homelies, such as, '...by hard work, thrift
and honesty, a poor man might release himself from the
prison of poverty' or '...when you run into debt, you
give another power over your liberty'. Although his
aphorisms were distorted in time to come, Franklin the
scientist personified belief in the capacity of humans to
understand themselves and the world in which they live.
Sir Humphrey Davy, in a tribute to Franklin, said,
"...By very small means, Franklin established great
truths...he rendered his experiments amusing as well as
as perspicuous, elegant as well as simple...and he has
sought to make science a useful inmate and servant in
the common habitations of man, than to preserve (it)
merely as an object of admiration in temples and pal-
aces."
FULTON, ROBERT
American inventor, engineer and artist, who is best re-
membered for having pioneered the first steamship, was
brought up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As a boy he showed
an enormous aptitude for fashioning things, making a
rocket, a hand-propelled paddle-wheel boat and even a
gun. By the time he was seventeen, he was already sup-
porting himself as an artist by selling his paintings as
well as his mechanical drawings. After a chequered ca-
reer that involved trying to improve the submarine, Fulton
formed a business partnership and launched his first
steamship in the Seine that travelled at three mile's an
hour. On 18 August 1807, the steamboat later known as
the Claremont was launched in New York city, beginning
a succesful steam navigation business for Fulton. While
testing his steamship for the first time on the Mississippi
river, a huge crowd gathered to see the technological
feat. Fulton started his operations for generating steam.
After some time, the ship started vibrating and smoke
issued from the funnel. The crowd started shouting, "It
will never move."
However, after the noisy operations the ship started
gliding slowly along the river. The crowd started shout-
ing, "It will never stop." But, stop it did.
Said a narrator of the following incident: "I chanced
to be at Albany on business when Fulton arrived there,
in his unheard-of craft that everybody felt so much inter-
ested in seeing. Being ready to leave and hearing that the
craft was going to return to New York, I repaired on
board and inquired for Mr Fulton. I was referred to the
cabin, and there found a plain, gentlemanly man, wholly
alone, and engaged in writing.
'"Mr Fulton, I presume?'
'"Yes, sir.'
'"Can I have a passage down?'
'"You can take your chance with us, Sir.'
"I inquired the amount to be paid, and after a
moment's hesitation, a sum, I think $ 6, was named. I
laid it on his open hand and with one eye fixed on it, he
remained so long motionless, that I supposed there might
be a miscount, and said to him, 'Is that right, Sir?'
"The question roused him as if from a kind of rev-
erie, and he looked up to me, a big tear brimming in his
eye. In his faltering voice he said, 'Excuse me, Sir, but
my memory was busy as I contemplated this, the first
pecuniary award I have ever received for all my exer-
tions in adapting steam to navigation. I should gladly
commemorate the occasion over a bottle of wine with
you, but really I am too poor, even for that just now'."
GALILEO, GALILEI
Astronomer-physicist (1564-1642)
Italian astronomer, physicist and mathematician, who is
credited with the initiation of the scientific revolution in
the 17th century, in Italy, made his chief contribution by
introducing experimentation and mathematical proof as
the crucial test for a scientific theory rather than teleo-
logical explanation. The essence of his work is contained
in his Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating
to Two New Sciences, published in 1638, and in which
Galileo systematically disproved all the assumptions made
in the prevailing Aristotlean physics. His legendary ex-
periment in which he is supposed to have thrown two
objects of unequal weight from the tower of Pisa was one
such effort.
As a young medical student, Galileo was kneeling
in the cathedral. An oil-lamp was swinging in the air
above him. The tick-tack of the swinging chain drew the
young student's attention to it. Suddenly he jumped to
his feet and to the astonishment of the others in the church,
ran out, gesticulating wildly. What Galileo had perceived
was that the pendulum of the rattling chain was taking
exactly the same time for every oscillation, although the
length of these oscillations was constantly reducing. When
he got home, Galileo worked out in detail the intricacies
of this kind of motion. Today this finds application in
the counting of the human pulse, solar eclipses and the
movement of stars.
Although Galileo was not interested in astronomy
in his early years, he became fascinated after reading
copies of a Copernican book in 1597, that had been pub-
lished by Kepler. Galileo wrote to Kepler that he en-
dorsed Copernicus' theory about the rotation of the earth
as it fitted in perfectly with his explanations of tides. The
same year, he manufactured the proportional compass.
In 1607, he invented a power telescope, three times as
powerful as the first one that had been manufactured in
Holland: this invention was to guarantee Galileo a life-
time professorship and a large salary. He became involved
in a controversy in 1612, when he published a book, openly
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THE LIVES OF SCIENTISTS 97
refuting Aristotle and endorsing Copernican ideas. His
book was attacked from the pulpit and an inquisition
was called for, that forced Galileo to recant his point-of-
view.
Galileo was summoned to appear before the Inqui-
sition for having openly published a book that supported
the view that the sun, and not the earth is at the centre
of the universe. The trial lasted six months and on 22
June 1633, he was compelled to retract his belief in the
movement of the earth. "Before the holy saint gospels
which I touch with my hands, I confess that my error
has been one of vain ambition and pure arrogance...I
now declare and swear that the earth does not move
around the sun..." And as he was led away from the
tribunal, trembling and exhausted, Galileo remarked un-
der his breath, three words that seem to epitomise the
founding spirit of science—"Eppur si muove" (but the earth
does move).
As a non-conformist in more ways than one, Galileo
kept getting into situations that made life occasionally
difficult. For example, he refused to wear the academic
robes worn by his colleagues, explaining that they un-
necessarily restricted his movements. However, for his
refusal to wear the right attire, Galileo was forced to pay
several fines that were deducted from his meagre salary.
At length his enemies prevailed and Galileo was dis-
missed from the faculty at Pisa.
Although Galileo had received orders to refrain from
writing another book,* he did write one while in prison at
Arcetri. It was called The Laws of Motion, and was a summary
of all the basic principles of mechanics. However, he had to
have the manuscript smuggled out to Holland for its
publication. But he could never see the book as he had
grown old in prison. The story goes that a copy was secretly
brought to him on his death-bed. Too weak to read, he held
it close to himself and said, "I esteem this the most of all my
works. It is the outcome of my extreme agony."
GALVANI, LUIGI
Physiologist (1737-1798)
The Italian physiologist, who did pioneering research in
the field of animal electricity, studied medicine and taught
anatomy at the University of Bologna. In 1791, after
painstaking research on the effects of atmospheric elec-
tricity on the muscular response of frogs, he stated that
animal tissues generate electricity. However, this theory
was eventually proved wrong.
It is not very often that two scientists leave behind
a legacy of dispute that is then continued for years by
their mutual supporters. Galvani and Volta did precisely
that; the latter, also an Italian, challenged Galvani's theory
of animal electricity by saying that the results were due
to the action of ordinary physical electricity generated
outside the animal. Anyway, the dipute lasted for sev-
eral years and on one occasion at a public demonstration
supporters of both Galvani and Volta almost came to
blows over the issue. Galvani was finally proved wrong,
but an electric device for detecting electric current was
named in his honour.
GAY-LUSSAC, JOSEPH LOUIS

Chemist (1778-1850)
This French chemist and physicist is best known for his
pioneering work on gas laws. He taught physics at
Sorbonne and later succeeded Berthelot as professor of
chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique. In 1802, Gay-
Lussac reformulated Charles' law of thermal expansion
of gases after extensive experimentation. In 1806, he
announced the law that now bears his name, which
states that gases combine chemically in simple propor-
tions by volume. This law was contested by Dalton but
supported by Avogadro, who used Gay-Lussac's law in
developing his hypothesis. Gay-Lussac also obtained
sodium and potassium in 1808 and in 1815 was the first
to obtain anhydrous prussic acid (an acid without oxy-
gen). He also developed new methods of volumetric
analysis.
Gay-Lussac was interested in finding out the chemi-
cal composition of the atmosphere at high altitudes. His
physicist friend Jean Baptiste Biot was at the time study-
ing the behaviour of a magnetic needle, not necessarily,
at sea-level. Thus the two friends decided to do the only
thing that was possible in those days—a daring balloon
flight that would take them to more than 7,000 metres.
At an elevation of about 7,016 metres, the balloon stopped
ascending and so Gay-Lussac started throwing all kinds
of things off from the balloon, including shoes, his coat
and finally the chair he was sitting on. The story goes
that as the white wooden chair came flying down to land
in some bushes, a shepherdess who was minding her
business was completely astonished at the sight she be-
held. The peasants who heard her story reported that the
shepherdess was at a loss to explain why, if the chair
had come from heaven, the workmanship on it could be
so crude.
GIRAUD, MARIUS
Ornithologist (dates unknown)
This French bird-watcher is credited with being one of
the first to categorise and study bird habits and behaviour
in detail. He was also renowned for his techniques of
studying birds in their natural habitat, and would often
go to extreme lengths to achieve this.
Marius Giraud used to spend several hours in his
garden every day practising bird calls. After several years
of practice, he thought he had finally mastered them and
ventured out into a nearby wood to see if he was profi-
cient enough to attract any birds. He was obviously ex-
tremely convincing, for he was promptly shot at by a
bird-hunter!
HAECKEL, ERNST HEINRICH

This German biologist became famous for important dis-
coveries in embryology and zoology and for his ardent
support of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Haeckel began
his studies in botany at the University of Berlin and later
studied medicine and earned his M.D. at Berlin. How-
ever, he soon abandoned medical practice, and joined a
scientific expedition to Messina to study radiolaria, on

the merit of which he was appointed professor of zool-
ogy in the University of Jena. It was here that Haeckel
did his work on embryology. After Darwin published his
Theory of Evolution, Haeckel quickly became an expo-
nent of the theory in the continent. He advocated Darwin's
theory with forceful and dogmatic assertion, and often
got involved in controversies over the issue as a result of
his arguments.
Embittered by the incessant nagging of an utterly
selfish daughter and an invalid wife, Haeckel found so-
lace in a clandestine relationship with a woman several
years younger than him. But torn between his disloyalty
towards his own wife and his infatuation for Franziska,
the younger woman, Haeckel decided to set sail on a trip
to the Indian Ocean. He wrote to her while he was on
board, "Franziska dearest, best beloved wife of my heart,
I depart for the tropical seas to escape from you and
from myself—two rare and extraordinary souls made for
each other who, separated, must wander lonely through
life..." Haeckel travelled far, to Singapore, Java and Sumatra,
but his sorrow stayed with him wherever he went. Fi-
nally he wrote to Franziska, "Man escapes himself no-
where." Shortly after his return, the young Franziska died
of heart failure.
Haeckel had a peculiar way of exercising his chest,
"to make it breathe deeply," he would explain. He would
stand at the open window of his bedroom and pound
heavily on it with his fists, arousing quite a few giggles
from the passersby as a result. On some days, he would
pound on his chest with both fists all the way from home
to college, leaving behind a trail of chuckling students!
HAHN, OTTO
Physical chemist (1879-1968)
The German chemist was given the 1944 Nobel Prize in
chemistry for his work on nuclear fission. After his doc-

torate in organic chemistry from Marburg University, he
went to London in 1904 to participate in the search for
new radioactive elements, and worked with Sir William
Ramsay. During his stay there, he discovered radiotho-
rium. After a year, he accompanied Ernest Rutherford to
McGill University in Montreal, and while there he dis-
covered radioactinium. Returning to Berlin in 1906, he
discovered mesothorium. All his future work involved a
partnership with the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner,
with whom Otto Hahn worked for thirty years. In 1932,
in the wake of Fermi's series of experiments on neutron
capture, Hahn turned to the study of neutrons and of
identifying the results of the neutron bombardment ex-
periments of Fermi. This led Hahn, along with his asso-
ciates Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassman, to the secret of
the 'chain reaction', the key behind the atomic bomb.
The story of the the birth of the first atomic bomb is
a curious one. During the 1930s it was well known to
physicists and chemists that Enrico Fermi was doing a
series of very new experiments on uranium in which he
was hoping to build up the uranium nucleus by a pro-
cess known as 'neutron capture', into heavier forms, known
as trans-uranium nuclei. Hahn then began studying Fermi's
results which he found 'very confusing'. He found to his
intense surprise that one of the products of the experir
ment was an unexpected element called barium, which
curiously enough has an atomic number of 56 and is
close to being half of the atomic number of uranium.
However, Hahn and his associate Strassman chose to ignore
the implications of this and when they published their
paper on 6 January 1939, stuck to just the bare facts,
without venturing into anything else. At that time, Hahn's
other associate Lise Meitner was in Sweden. She and her
nephew, the renowned Otto Frisch, read the paper in
Sweden and took courage to say that from the curious
appearance of barium, it seemed that the nucleus had
been split! This started a series of experiments all over

again which confirmed the splitting of the nucleus and
that the process produced more electrons than were needed
to begin, the initial fission. This was the start of what is
called the 'chain reaction', which is, of course, the basis
for the atomic bomb. During the Second World War, Hahn
worked against the possible attainment of the atomic bomb
by the Nazis.
When he went to London in 1904 to work with Sir
Ramsay, the young Otto Hahn also spent time trying to
learn dancing. He described, in his own words, his early
attempts to learn the art: "I found a very young lady
who was prepared to be my partner while I made my
first attempts at the new steps. As we were dancing on
beautiful soft carpets and I wanted to make at least a
little conversation, I said, 'You, here in England, you
dance on the carpet. We, in our country prefer to dance
on the naked bottom'. The young lady stared at me in
utter bewilderment, then walked off, turning her back to
me, and never looked at me again the whole evening.
When I repeated the episode to Ramsay's son, he laughed
and explained to me where my English had gone fatally
wrong."
News of Hahn's wedding spread rapidly. Said the
chauffeur of a friend, "Dear, dear...and Professor Hahn
was always such a cheerful gentleman!"
Hahn was once being interviewed. In response to a
question, he replied, "We always worked without pro-
tection. We handled our preparations with our bare hands
and stirred them around with our fingers. And under
the table on which Lise Meitner and I worked, we kept
a crate that always contained between 150 and 250
kilogrammes of uranium salts. Nowadays chemists and
physicists would have a fit if anyone suggested they should
expose themselves day in and day out. But it never did
us any harm. I did sometimes have sore fingers, but that
passed off. Only the nail of my left forefinger refuses to
126 XV111 OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
grow again. No, I can't report ever having suffered any

serious trouble. I am always rather suspicious of people
who make a great fuss."
HALDANE, JOHN BURDON SANDERSEN

Haldane, the British geneticist, made important contribu-
tions to the mathematical analysis of genetics and evolu-
tion. He formulated his theory in the 1920s, at the same
time as two other British geneticists, Fisher and Wright.
Haldane's investigation included mathematical analyses
of mutation rates, intensities of selection, and rates of
evolutionary change. Haldane also did some significant
research on colour blindness and haemophilia. He did
pioneering work in biochemical genetics of primrose and
did experimental work in human physiology. Haldane
taught at Cambridge and at University College in Lon-
don. Two of Haldane's books, Enzymes (1930) and The
Causes of Evolution (1932) are acclaimed as scientific clas-
sics.
As a two-year old, Haldane stood before a mirror,
making curious faces. He was trying to copy various
dogs, and experimenting how best to look like the dogs
he had seen near his house. This quality of experiment-
ing with himself was to remain throughout his life. He
used to conduct horrifying experiments upon his own
body to test its behaviour under different conditions.
J.B.S. was popular among his troops during the First
World War and regarded as something of a hero. He
apparently used to sneak into enemy lines at night and
return with invaluable information. Once while snoop-
ing and eavesdropping, he heard a nasty remark being
made about Britain. He dropped a bomb in anger, and
barely managed to escape under heavy fire!
In addition to his great trust and confidence in sci-
entific research and the inherent value of science, Haldane
was als,o a committed communist. He was a member of

the British Communist Party and spoke critically of the
ruling party on political platforms. Faced with disillu-
sionment about the future of England, he decided, in
1957, to emigrate to India—a country which he had al-
ways been very fond of. Haldane became a naturalised
Indian citizen in 1961 and never returned.to England
again.
In the beginning of his stay in India, Haldane shared
his flat with his male secretary. When he learnt that the
latter's young fiancee was coming to stay with them in
the same flat, the elderly biologist wrote a letter of wel-
come to her. However, he cautioned her, "It is only fair
to warn you that you should probably avoid being on
the roof with me at night. This is not for the reason
which you might think, for I am sixty-five years old and
love my wife; but because I am liable to start talking
about stars and you may find this very boring!"
At the age of 71, Haldane died of cancer at
Bhubaneswar. Even during his painful illness, Haldane
remained his normal cheerful self. He even wrote a merry
poem, Cancer's a Funny Thing, in his last days, and con-
sidered by many who have read it as one of the best
poems on the subject.
HALL, CHARLES M. and HEROULT, PANT-LOTUS-

TOUSAINT
(1863-1914) and (1863-1914)
Hall and Heroult simultaneously developed the electro-
chemical method of isolating aluminium, the most abun-
dant element in nature.
Hall, a student at Oberlin College, inspired by the
accounts which Prof.F.F. Jewelt had given of his studies,
decided that his supreme aim in life would be to devise
a cheap method for making aluminium. In an impro-
vised laboratory in the woodshed and with home-made
batteries, he struggled for some years with his experi-

ments. On 23 February 1886, this boy of twenty-one years
rushed into his professor's office and held out to the
latter a handful of aluminium buttons. Since these but-
tons led to a highly successful electrolytic process for
manufacturing aluminium, the Aluminium Company of
America treasures these buttons to this day and refers to
them affectionately as the 'crown jewels'. A beautiful statue
of the youthful Charles M. Hall, cast in aluminium, can
be seen at Oberlin College.
At the same time, French metallurgist Heroult de-
veloped an identical method of isolating aluminium. The
simultaneous discovery led to legal battles in law courts
for the priority of patent rights. This however did not
prevent Heroult from travelling to the USA to felicitate
Hall at the award-winning ceremony for the Perkin Medal.
He established with his action that petty jealousies do
not affect great scientists.
HALSTEAD, WILLIAM STEWART

Surgeon (1852-1922)
This American surgeon made important contributions to
the development of surgical techniques and the teaching
of surgery. Halstead studied at Yale and received his
M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in
New York. He served as professor of surgery at the John
Hopkins hospital, where he developed improved meth-
ods for operations on hernia and breast cancer. Halstead
always stressed on the relationship between surgery and
physiology, and emphasised the need for careful han-
dling of tissues and avoidance of excessive blood loss.
He passed these ideas to future surgeons trained in the
hospital's residency programme—a programme Halstead
introduced for the first time in the USA on the basis of
his experience in Germany.
As has happened so very often in the development
of science and technology, the use of rubber gloves in

surgery was equally serendipitous. One of the theatre
nurses of Dr Halstead once developed a nasty rash on
her hands from contact with antiseptics. Halstead thought
about a possible solution and came up with the idea of
using gloves made out of rubber, instead of the cotton
ones which everyone was using then. He started using
them himself and it soon caught on...
In 1880, Halstead and his co-workers discovered the
amazing anaesthetic properties of cocaine which served
as an excellent nerve block. It worked very well, but
there was soon a problem at hand—Halstead became
addicted to cocaine and almost lost his medical career.
However, he was hospitalised and recovered soon enough
to go on to become the leading surgeon of his time.
HARDY, GODFREY HAROLD

Hardy, the British mathematician, is credited with two
important contributions to the world of mathematics: firstly,
for his important discoveries in every branch of math-
ematical analysis, and secondly, for his patronage of the
Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Hardy

was a professor^ of pure mathematics at Cambridge from
1931 to 1942. He was a prolific writer and published over
eleven books, of which his Collected Mathematical Papers
comprised seven volumes. Hardy was also an avid fan of
the game of cricket and wrote a popular book, Apology,
in 1940.
Hardy, the great mathematician, was also a staunch
agnostic. Once, while watching a cricket match at Lord's,
he saw an English batsman at the crease being troubled
by a bright reflection from the stands. When he com-
plained to the umpires, the game halted momentarily as
the linesmen, umpires and the match organisers ran around
trying to locate the source of the light. Finally it was
discovered to be coming from a large cross hanging on
the broad chest of a Catholic clergyman. Of course, the
umpires had to request this man of God to remove the
cross. Hardy was so delighted when he saw the cross
being taken off, that at lunch he immediately began writing
cards to his clerical friends to inform them of the plight
of their reverend brother!
Hardy was a pure mathematician who had abso-
lutely no interest in any practical application whatso-
ever. In fact, he kept emphatically insisting that in no
way did he wish to be linked to anything practical. It
was therefore rather ironic that one of his 1908 papers
was directly useful in the study of RH blood groups.
Since the same principle of population genetics was dis-
covered independently by the German physician Wilhelm
Weinberg, it is known as the Hardy-Weinberg principle.
HAWKING, STEPHEN
Theoretical physicist and mathematician (1942- )
Hawking was born on 8 January 1942, the date which
happens to be the three hundredth death anniversary of
Galileo Galilei. When this was pointed out to him at the
peak of his career, his only reply was that thousands of

children all over the world must have been born on the
same date.
At the age of twenty-one he was struck by an incur-
able disease of motor neurons which affects the nerves of
the spinal cord and parts of the brain that facilitate vol-
untary motor functions. While the body gradually wastes
away, thought and memory processes remain intact. Such
a person has to depend upon exosomatic appliances for
physical functions like movement and speech.
Doctors had given him only two to three years of
life but Dr Stephen Hawking, Lucasian professor of
mathematics at Cambridge, has crossed his 50 years and
continues to live till today.
A friend of authors, Dr A.B. Pandit had the good
fortune of meeting Stephen Hawking when carrying out
research in chemical engineering at Cambridge. He has
to say this about Stephen Hawking: "During my stay at
Cambridge for nearly eight years for my own research
work, for the first time I saw Stephen Hawking in his
wheel-chair, zooming around in Cambridge. I did not
know who he was but his face reminded me of a photo-
graph I had seen during my college days in Science To-
day. I then remembered the article and realised who he
was and how he had widened the horizons of astrophys-
ics with a discovery in black hole thermodynamics. A
few weeks, later I had the opportunity to have dinner
with him at the university when I could not resist the
temptation of entering into a conversation with him.
Though his speech was barely discernible at that time, it
was indeed very exciting to talk to him about things in
general, related to Cambridge and India.
"One thing which struck me most at that meeting was
his intense desire to communicate and the conviction with
which he spoke. My first apprehension on my inability to
communicate with him was soon forgotten and I did not
realise that I was talking to a person with such a severe
handicap. I think he also realised that and the subject of his

disability never crept up in our conversation. We talked for
about fifteen to twenty minutes. He was a real model for
disabled people. He said in one of his speeches before an
occupational science conference: 'It is very important that
disabled children should be helped to blend with others of
the same age. It determines their self-image. How can one
feel a member of the human race if one is set apart from an
early age? It is a form of apartheid'.
"When asked what was the greatest regret he had
because of his severe physical disablility, he replied 'I
miss playing with my children'.
"I could not agree more with his views on the ori-
ental approach to astrophysics, as it dealt mainly with
the elaborate calculating procedure rather than develop-
ing a quantitative understanding of the evolution of the
universe. Next time I had another opportunity to dine
with him and this was at the Gonville & Cains College.
During the fellows' dinner where I was a guest, the con-
versation ranged on varied subjects and I could get a
little more insight into the man's mind. By this time, he
had acquired a voice synthesiser and frequently com-
plained about its accent, which is a well-known joke to-
day. Though, in my opinion, this passionless voice was
most suited for his work on astrophysics as he was very
impartial about proposing and repudiating his own theo-
ries, it was an object lesson for a person like me who was
just starting his research career in chemical engineering.
Single-mindedness towards work and dispassionate ap-
proach towards one's work were the two key points which
I learned from Prof. Hawking."
HEISENBERG, WERNER KARL

This German physicist won the 1932 Nobel Prize for his
creation of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg was a
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THE LIVES OF SCIENTISTS 111
protege of mathematician David Hilbert and physicist
Max Born under whom he studied at Gottingen after
taking his doctorate from the University of Munich. Sub-,
sequent to Gottingen, he spent the next year in
Copenhagen, working with Neils Bohr. Later he served
as professor of theoretical physics at the University of
Berlin and as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of
Physics. Heisenberg's contribution came at an appropri-
ate time when the world of physics was a buzz of con-
fusion and anticipation, following Bohr's new atomic
theory. Heisenberg turned to the mathematics of 'matri-
ces', replacing the earlier mechanical model of physical
reality by a complex mathematical system. In 1927, he
stated his famous 'uncertainty principle', which holds
that at the atomic level, events cannot be predicted ex-
actly; only the statistical probability of such events can
be determined. Together with the other emerging quan-
tum mechanical theories of the time, Heisenberg's uncer-
tainty principle completely transformed the familiar world
of 19th century physics.
Heisenberg and his other physicist-friends were in
the habit of taking a modest mid-day meal at a pub opposite
their lodgings. "One day," recalled Heisenberg many years
later, "the landlady, to my surprise, called me into her
room and informed me that we physicists could no longer
eat at her place since the eternal talk of physics at our
table was unbearable for the other guests!"
Heisenberg once compared his research to the expe-
rience of mountain climbing. "The climber," he said, "im-
mersed in fog has only a vague idea of the location and
condition of the peak he intends to ascend. Determined
not to give in to difficulties, he keeps going, one step at
a time, but he does not really know whether he is mov-
ing towards the peak or not. Then all of a sudden, the
fog clears away for a moment. The climber recognises
the goal of his striving as well as the surrounding situ-
ation. He sees a pattern and at that very moment, the
whole picture changes completely." In the same context
he once wrote to a colleague, "There was a moment when
I received sudden inspiration and saw that energy was
constant with respect to time. It was fairly late at night
that I worked this out laboriously, and it was correct.
Then I climbed a rock and saw the sunrise and was happy."
When a telegram arrived from Stockholm on No-
vember 9, after the semester had started at Leipzig,
Heisenberg immediately rushed to the phone and called
his mother in Munich, "Mama, I congratulate you on
your son...I've just won the Nobel Prize!"
Heisenberg, however was far from enjoying his fame
as a Nobel laureate. He wrote, "With this prize, I have a
bad conscience as far as Schroedinger, Dirac and Bohr
are concerned. Schroedinger and Dirac, both deserved a
full prize just as much as me, and I would have gladly
shared the prize with Bohr..."
Once Niels Bohr received a cryptic letter from
Heisenberg which ran: "I am sometimes somewhat afraid
about how a marriage can be combined with work in
physics, but your example, more than anything else, has
strengthened my courage there..."
At a war-time meeting of German nuclear scientists
in England, a suspicious Diebnev asked before the pro-
ceedings were to begin, "I wonder whether there are built-
in microphones here?"
Heisenberg laughed and jokingly replied, "Oh no,
they aren't that sly. I don't think they know such Ge-
stapo methods. In that respect they are a bit old-fash-
ioned."
At the end of 1970, Heisenberg, then sixty-nine, re-
tired from his position as Director of the Max Planck
Institute. In his farewell speech, he philosophised, "...The
troubled times have passed, and we could meditate in
peace on the great questions that Plato raised, questions
that had perhaps found an answer in the physics of el-
ementary particles."
HERSCHEL, CAROLINE LUCRETIA

This British woman astronomer to make a mark was born
in Hanover. She is credited with the discovery of eight
comets. She was awarded the gold medal of the Royal
Astronomical Society for her catalogue of clusters and
nebulae observed by her brother and herself.
The singular motivating force in Caroline Herschel's
life was her absolute devotion to her brother. She fol-
lowed him to England in 1772. There she began a suc-
cessful career as a soprano soloist in performances con-
ducted by her brother. When William Herschel turned to
astronomy, she immediately became his assistant, often
working until daybreak and carrying out extensive cal-
culations. Tragically, she could never come into her own:
William's marriage in 1788 was a shattering blow to her
morale and she could never recover from it. Caroline
later destroyed all her journals from 1788 to 1798 which
were filled with valuable astronomical data. When Wil-
liam died in 1822, she returned to Hanover.
HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDRICK WILLIAM

Herschel was the British astronomer whose efforts in
astronomy founded the science of galactic structure. He
discovered the planet Uranus, over 2,500 star clusters
and nebulae, over 800 double stars, as well as the infra-
red radiation. William Herschel also showed that most
apparent double stars are actually physical systems of
stars held together by gravity. He made a mark in build-
ing large telescopes; the one he built in 1783, with a 40-
foot reflector, remained the largest telescope used until
1969. William Herschel was knighted in 1816.
Sir William Herschel built the first of his giant tele-
scopes in the year 1769. Before the lenses were fixed and
the telescope erected, various distinguished guests were
invited to stroll through the telescope tube, which mea-
sured more than 30 feet! The King was there too, one
day, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was
finding the tube a trifle slippery to walk in. Quipped the
King mischievously, "Come my Lord Archbishop, I will
show you the way to heaven!"
There was much speculation afoot on the appear-
ance of stars. A dinner was held at which Henry Cavendish
was seated next to Herschel. Cavendish started the con-
versation by inquiring politely, "Is it true that the stars
are round?"
"Round as a button," replied Herschel, with a dead-
pan face.
An eloquent silence followed. At the end of the dinner,
Cavendish timidly ventured again, "Round as a button?"
"Round as a button," replied Herschel, and there
ended the conversation!
HUMBOLDT, BARON ALEXANDER VON

Scientist (1769-1859)
Humboldt was a German scientist, explorer and diplo-
mat, especially renowned for his explorations in the

Americas and Asia. Humboldt was one of the most ver-
satile naturalists of all time and his diverse contributions
to science include works in geography, botany, climatol-
ogy and geophysics. He was also responsible for impor-
tant improvements in mining methods. Humboldt was
also renowned for possessing a phenomenal encyclopaedic
brain and could talk on virtually any subject. He was
also a prolific scientific writer and had numerous publi-
cations to his credit.
One of the greatest naturalists and travellers of all
time, Alexander von Humboldt remained humble and
modest till the very end of his life. In his later years, he
would often remark to his friends, "You should have
known my brother William. He was by far the cleverer of
us two." In his greatness, he always regarded his elder
brother as a real teacher and himself as a mere pupil.
An account of Humboldt's travels alone would fill
volumes. In 1799, he set sail for Venezuela from Spain
with the French botanist Aime Bopland. After exploring
the coastal area, they travelled inland into one of the
least known and most hazardous regions of the Ameri-
cas, navigating the Orinco and the Rio Negro on native
boats. From this trip, Humboldt came back with a trea-
sury of knowledge—thousands of unknown tropical plants,
zoological and geological collections, and astronomical
and geomagnetic data. His next trip was in December
1800 to Cuba, where he was appalled by the conditions
of slave labour, and of which he wrote critically. From
there he sailed to Colombia and then to Ecuador, where
he nearly succeeded in scaling Mt. Chimborazo, climbing
to a height of 18,893 feet, without much equipment. Then
he surveyed the headwaters of the Amazon and trekked
along ancient Inca trails in Peru. After that, Humboldt
studied the current in the Pacific Ocean, which is now
named after him. In 1803, he went to Mexico, where he
spent a year studying the country's economic resources
and its pre-Columbian antiquities. His next trip was to

the United States, where he was greatly attracted by the
ideals and institutions of democracy and freedom. He
visited Thomas Jefferson in Washington and also James
Madison, Albert Gallatin, and the painters Gilbert Stuart
and Charles Wilson Peale. Humboldt campaigned fiercely
for ending slavery and won many friends and admirers
in the USA. He finally settled in Paris in 1808, and spent
the next four years writing an exhaustive account of his
travels and of the scientific discoveries in the Americas.
The publication ran into some 12,000 pages and was
acclaimed by scholars and scientists as a masterpiece.
However, it was too scholarly for the general public and
hardly a copy was sold. Humboldt had sunk all his money
into the publication which led to his financial ruin!
Shortly before he died at the ripe age of ninety,
Humboldt was visited by Bernard Taylor, the American
poet, who had travelled all the way to Berlin to meet
him. When ushered into Humboldt's study, he found the
white-haired scientist at a table that was covered with
sheets of paper. Taylor found that there were proofs of
a new volume of Cosmos, awaiting publication. "This is
what I have been doing since you were last here," said
Humboldt to an amazed Taylor. "Several of the volumes
have already been published. This one is just about to go
to press."
"Do you find yourself capable of such exacting
labour?" asked Taylor.
"I sleep very little," said the old scientist. "Work is
my life. The day before yesterday, I worked for sixteen
hours without a break, correcting these sheets."
HUNTER, JOHN
Surgeon (1728-1793)
This British surgeon pioneered scientific surgery at a time
when leading surgeons in London taught by apprentice-
ship and limited their lectures and writings to case his-

tories, descriptive anatomy and theoretical discussions
of surgical procedures. Hunter maintained that surgery
should be based on a thorough knowledge of physiol-
ogy. He is best remembered for his operation of patho-
logical distension of the artery behind the knee joint. It
is acclaimed as an outstanding surgical innovation that
Hunter had derived from his experimental studies on
animals. Hunter also collected many specimens, which
are now lodged in the Hunterian Museum in London.
His masterpiece, A treatise on Blood, Inflammation, and
Gunshot Wounds, appeared after Hunter's death in 1794.
Hunter was a popular professor and his lectures on
anatomy were usually well attended. One day, however,
when he arrived for his morning class, he found only
one solitary student sitting on the front bench. The stu-
dent heard Hunter mutter, "I cannot waste my time on
only one student," after which he dashed outside. Hunter
returned again, this time clasping a human skeleton to
his chest, that he lovingly placed in a sitting position,
adjacent to the startled lone student. Humboldt paused,
took a breath and began, "Gentlemen, we were discuss-
ing.J"
John Hunter also prophesied his death, albeit in a

more scientific way. Hunter had a violent temper and he
was sure that his death would be caused by 'angina
pectoris'. Sure enough, that is exactly how Hunter died.
He had a heart attack after a fit of rage!
HUXLEY, SIR JULIAN

Huxley was a British biologist and humanist, who made
important discoveries in the field of biology and played
a leading part in the introduction of experimental meth-
ods and concepts into biological research and teachin
The 'new sytematics' owes its inception to Julian Huxle^,
who showed that the study of the differences between
species must not be restricted to comparisons of mu-
seum materials, but must involve an integration with
studies in ecology, genetics, population analysis, statis-
tics, ethology and other areas. Huxley was one of the
first biologists to go out into the field, instead of confin-
ing himself to the four walls of the laboratory viewing
specimens under a microscope.
In 1942, Julian Huxley wrote, what is a definite clas-
sic, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, covering all aspects
of evolution. He taught in Britain and the United States,
was the first Director-General of UNESCO in 1946-48,
was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1938, was
awarded its Darwin Medal in 1958, and was knighted in
1958. He wrote a great many articles in scientific journals
and in addition to his definitive work on evolution, wrote
several other books including Evolution in Action (1953)
and Religion without Revelation (1957).
Julian Huxley was born into a family whose history
reads like a Who's Who book. His father Leonard Huxley
was a brilliant biographer and historian, his grandfather
Sir Thomas Huxley a noted scientist, his brother Aldous
Huxley a great thinker and writer and his half-brother
Andrew Fielding Huxley a Nobel laureate in physiology.

Julian Huxley, like his illustrious grandfather Tho-
mas Huxley, also tried his hand at poetry. "I was letting
my brain get lop-sided, so I wrote a volume of poems as
a safety valve. I found relief from my laboratory by writing
about the beauties of brooks and sunsets," he said.
All convention was flouted in the way Sir Julian
Huxley appointed his staff. During the mid-thirties he
had to interview a candidate for the headship of a de-
partment in the London zoo. A few days later, the can-
didate sought a second meeting with Huxley to tell him,
"When you get the reports from back home, you'll find
that I'm a chap who's always been in opposition and
always had rows with the government."
"Suits me fine," replied Huxley. "You're hired."
HUXLEY, SIR THOMAS HENRY

As a British biologist, Sir Thomas is seen as one of the
founding fathers of 19th century biology, with his de-
tailed investigations in comparative anatomy, palaeontology
and evolution. Huxley was also one of the first to accept
Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and did much to

support and publicise Darwin's work. After passing his
examinations from the Royal College of Surgeons, Huxley
sailed on the H.M.S. Rattlesnake as assistant surgeon on
a voyage to explore channels north of Australia.
At a halt in Australia, he fell in love with a 'lady
love exceedingly fair with soft blue eyes and yellow hair'.
But they decided not to marry until Huxley had made a
reputation for himself as a scientist. His friends advised
him that the only way of making a quick reputation was
to do a Tittle trumpeting'. And so the shy and sensitive
Tom, who had a pathological fear of talking to crowds,
found himself at the British Association, giving a lecture
on 'Oceanic Hydrozoa' to a group of scholars on the
subject, who had a habit of 'waving and waggutg one
coat-tail when they applauded'. This act of feigned as-
surance that concealed a jittery heart did not fail to make
a small impact and a small notice did appear in the Lit-
erary Gazette. This was the beginning of Tom's journey to
fame as the most promising scientist in Europe, and all
this for the love of a girl whom he married seven years
later.
When Henrietta arrived in London for the wedding,
she was in extremely poor health as a result of an earlier
wrong treatment. The first thing he did was to take her
to an eminent physician who gave her six months to live.
Huxley, a doctor himself, told him, "Six months or not,
she is going to be my wife."
Huxley met Charles Darwin in 1851 and the two
maintained a close relationship thereafter. This associa-
tion continued despite the fact that though Huxley origi-
nally believed that species are immutable, he supported
Darwin whole-heartedly. Huxley was a member of the
elite council of the Royal Society and served on the Lon-
don School Board where he exerted a lasting influence
on educational techniques. He was a brilliant writer and
wrote on biology as a specialist and as a populariser,
with a sincerity that did much for the propagation of

science throughout the world. He also wrote on philoso-
phy and theology in which he attacked some orthodox
dogmas and beliefs.
Thomas Huxley's first scientific paper was written
at the age of twenty, on a previously unstudied layer of
the hair follicle. Even today, this is still known as Huxley's
layer! He was elected to the Royal Society at the age of
twenty-five and to its council at the age of twenty-six.
And it was not until two years later that he applied for
his first academic post!
Huxley's lectures were noted for his wit, brilliance
and biting sarcasm. Once during a class, he picked up
the notebook of a student who had been trying to draw
a sheep's liver with miserable results. Huxley inspected
the drawing for a few minutes, and handed the notebook
back. "It reminds me," he said acidly, "of the Cologne
cathedral in a fog."
In another class, at the conclusion of a his lecture,
he asked his students if he had been understood. One
bold voice spoke out, "All, Sir, but one part during which
you stood between me and the blackboard."
"I did my best to make myself clear," Huxley re-
torted, "but it seems I couldn't render myself transpar-
ent."
A controversialist by nature, Huxley engaged in
numerous debates with the clergy. Once at a convention
of the British Association in 1860, the Bishop of Oxford
asked Thomas Huxley with some measure of sarcasm, "I
beg to know from whom you claim your descent—from
a monkey, your grandmother or your grandfather?"
The audience was aghast and all heads turned to
Huxley, who replied without even a moment's hesita-
tion, "There is no need for me to be ashamed of having
an ape for my grandfather. If I might possibly feel ashamed
of calling someone an ape for my ancestor, he would be
a man like the Bishop of Oxford!"
Huxley had become notorious as a spokesman for

Darwin and used to participate vociferously in many a
debate on the evolution of humans. Along with a few
associates, he founded a club—a coterie of 'gentlemen
assassins of other people's prejudices'. It was at a meet-
ing of this club that Huxley coined the word that defined
his attitude towards religion. One of the members had
remarked, "Most of us are atheists. We know there is no
God."
To which Huxley immediately retorted, "As for myself,
I am merely an agnostic. I don't know." He later added
whimsically, "I have been providentially saved from a
life of sin by three unorthodox factors—Carlyle, science
and love. The philosophy of Carlyle has^taught me that
a deep sense of religion is quite compatible with the entire
absence of theology. Science has given me the support of
authority without dogma. Love has opened up to me a
view of the sanctity of human nature."
In his final years, Huxley the agnostic found himself
being exalted into a saint. The piece de resistance came
when he received a honorary degree of Doctor of Laws
from the citadel of British orthodoxy—the University of
Cambridge. But his wit and sarcasm had not left him.
"The only ambition that remains in me,", he said, "is to
become the Archbishop of Canterbury!" That didn't quite
take place, but he was soon knighted. He did accept the
honour but called 'ancestral nobility' a farce. Tongue-in-
-cheek, he made a rather wry remark, "My zoological
studies have carried me so far back to my rather remote
ancestors
,, that my immediate ancestors no longer interest
me.
Huxley's health suddenly started deteriorating in his
sixtieth year. He resigned from his professorship and his
inspectorship at the Department of Fisheries. And finally,
with a heavy heart he g?ve up his greatest honour—the
presidency of the Royal Society. In a touching speech he
explained to the members that in view of their kindness,
he could not consider holding on to the position for "even

a single moment after my reason and my conscience have
pointed out my incapacity to discharge the serious
duties of this office." When he finished his speech
amidst thunderous applause, he turned to his friends
and said sotto voice, "I have just announced my official
death."
IBN KHALDUN
Psychologist (1332-1406)
One of the intellectual giants of his time, Ibn Khaldun
was an obscure figure until the 19th century when West-
ern scholars discovered the relevance of his work on the
science of human behaviour. Ibn Khaldun was one of the
first positivists, and he systematically elaborated how
topography, demography and economic factors act as
sociological determinants.
One of the most fitting tributes to Ibn Khaldun's
work is given by Philip Hitti in Makers of Arab History.
Hitti wrote: "The philosopher was born at the wrong
time and in the wrong place. He came too late to rouse
any response among his people deep in medieval slum-
ber, or to find a would-be translator among Europeans.
He had no immediate predecessors and no successors.
No school of thought could be styled Khaldunic. His
meteoric career flashed across the North African firma-
ment leaving hardly a glare behind."
IBN SINA, ABU ALI

Physician (980-1037)
A precocious genius whose work spanned vast areas of
knowledge, Ibn Sina was a reputed physician of his time.
He is most well known for his magnum opus, The Canon
of Medicine (Al-Quanun), which until the birth of modern
medicine, remained the standard text in the world of
V
medicine. Ibn Sina however acquired a reputation for

hearsay and was declared by theologians of the time to
be a blasphemist.
Ibn Sina's approach to life and his commitment to
Islam was anything but conventional. To him, religion
and science were perfectly compatible and there was
nothing contradictory in being committed to both. What
really enraged his contemporaries was his open declara-
tion of his unique 'revitalisation' technique, that he wrote
about: "If a (scientific) problem was too great for me, I
retreated to the mosque and prayed, invoking the cre-
ator of all things until the gate that had been closed to
me was opened and what had been complex became
simple. Always, as night fell, I returned to my house, set
the lamp before me and buried myself in reading and
writing. If sleep overcame me or I felt the flesh growing
weak, I had recourse to a beaker of wine, so that my
energies were restored."
For a time Ibn Sina was Vizier to the Emir of Hamadan.
Insisting on the primacy of reason, he got into an argu-
ment with some of the officers in the Army who hap-
pened to be staunch believers. They soon called for his
execution and sent soldiers to his house to have him
arrested. Ibn Sina was expecting something like this and
had fled a few days earlier to the house of his friend Abu
Said Dafdaq, where he hid for several months. Although
Ibn Sina's house was plundered and all his papers and
( books burned, he produced a masterpiece, while he was
in hiding, in none other than the Al-Quanun which was

to remain the classic medical reference work for the world,
for long after he had died!
Ibn Sina fled persecution and the wrath of the rulers
several times. His books were banned and his life was
under constant threat. However, when his friends ad-
vised him to tone down his views, he replied, "I prefer
a short life with depth to a narrow one with length," and
continued his work undaunted.
Later, defending his commitment in a famous poem,

he wrote:
It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic,
No belief in religion is firmer than mine own.
I am the unique person in the whole world if I am
a heretic,
Then there is not a single Musalman anywhere in
the world.
JOLIOT, FREDERIC
Physicist
Joliot, with his special ability as an experimentalist, chose
to concentrate on physics and not chemistry. His profes-
sor Dr Langevin, after his graduation advised him to
work for Madam Curie at her Radium Institute. He ap-
peared before Madam Curie, trembling in his shoes.-Madam
Curie asked him, "Can you start work tomorrow?"
Joliot replied, "I am working in military service and
I have to finish my assignment within three weeks."
Madam Curie asked him, "What is the name of your
Colonel? Let me settle the matter with him."
Joliot reported to work from the very next day. He
married Madam Curie's daughter Irene during this as-
signment. The Joliot-Curie couple discovered 'artificial
radioactivity' and for their unique achievement, earned
the Nobel Prize in chemistry in the year 1955 when
Chad wick earned the Nobel Prize in physics for his dis-
covery of the neutron. During the Great War when France
was under enemy occupation, most of the academy staff
of the university left Paris. Irene with her two children
also left for Switzerland, but Joliot continued as profes-
sor in the university in France. After the war he was
appointed Chairman of Atomic Energy by Charles de
Gaulle. It was therefore no surprise when Charles de
Gaulle ordered a state funeral for Joliot which was at-
tended by most of the French people.
KAPITZA, PETER LEONIDOVICH

Russian physicist, who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize
for physics, for his pioneering inventions and discover-
ies in the area of low-temperature physics, cryogenics,
began his scientific career in the electromagnetic depart-
ment of the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute. In 1921, he
came to the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge to work
with Ernest Rutherford and made significant discoveries
in magnetism, viz. the effect of very strong magnetic
fields on the properties of metals. Kapitza turned to low
temperature research in his last years at Cambridge and
continued the work after his return to Moscow in 1934.
Not much of the episode was ever revealed, but when
Kapitza went to Moscow in 1934, it was with the inten-
tion of presenting a paper on his work at the Cavendish
laboratory. However, upon arrival at Moscow airport, he
was arrested and his passport impounded. Thereafter,
Kapitza had no choice but to stay on in Russia. To his
credit, he managed to continue his research in cryogenics
and established the Institute for Physical Problems. His
persecution by the Stalin regime didn't end there. He
was placed under house arrest and many of his activities
severely curtailed between 1946 to 1954. The reason was
his refusal to work with nuclear arms.
Kapitza began a series of experiments to study liq-
uid helium that led to his discovery of the superfluidity
©f helium in 1937. Late in the 1940s, he turned his atten-
tion to inventing high-power microwave generators, and
discovered a new kind of plasma. Kapitza received eleven
honorary degrees and was elected to full and honorary
membership of innumerable institutions. He was also a
member of the Pugwash movement of scientists for peace
In 1933, while Kapitza was still at Cambridge, he
was asked by Rutherford to arrange for a facade for their
new laboratory. Kapitza chose the facade to be adorned
with a crocodile chiselled in stone by the well-known
British sculptor Eric Gill. At the offficial inauguration,

Kapitza was asked why he had chosen a crocodile as the
motif. He replied with a characteristic twinkle in his eyes,
"Well, mine is the crocodile of science. The crocodile will
not turn its head. Like science, it must always go for-
ward with all-devouring jaws."
KELVIN, LORD WILLIAM THOMSON

This British physicist and inventor was one of the most
influential intellectuals of the Victorian age. He had more
than 660 publications, touching on every significant area
of 19th century physics. He also held over seventy
patents, related mainly to telegraphy, electrical measure-
ment and marine navigation. He is best known, how-
ever, for his contributions to the subject of thermody-
namics and submarine telegraphy.
William Thomson was initially trained as a math-
ematician and while at Cambridge, published a dozen
original publications in theoretical physics. Apart from
that he rowed in the college races and founded the Uni-
versity Musical Society. His first important work was in
Paris in 1845 on the theory of electricity, where he de-

rived some crucial equations for many of Faraday's ideas,
thus laying the foundations for a mathematical theory of
electricity and magnetism. While in Paris, he also discov-
ered Carnot's theory on the motive power of heat which
led him to formulate, upon his return to Glasgow, the
important concept of an absolute temperature scale, that
now bears his name. In 1854, he was appointed Director
of the Atlantic Telegraph Company and he frequently
sailed aboard the cable-laying vessels in 1865 and 1866.
After the cable was successfully laid, Thomson received
a knighthood and within a few years, royalties on some
of his telegraph patents made him a wealthy man.
In 1867, along with P.G.Tait, he wrote the famous
Treatise on Natural Philosophy, the most influential phys-
ics text-book of the century. In 1892, Queen Victoria raised
him to the peerage of Lord Kelvin, a name he took from
the Kelvin river, which flows near the University of
Glasgow.
Thompson was always a better researcher than he
was a lecturer. In recognition of his great scientific achieve-
ments, the title 'Lord Kelvin' was to be conferred on him.
He therefore asked his assistant Mr Day to take over his
teaching assignments during his absence. Mr Day inci-
dentally was an excellent teacher. Returning after the
ceremony, Lord Kelvin resumed his teaching. As he stepped
into the classroom he found the students in a hilarious
mood. Turning to the blackboard, he found a biblical
reproof, slightly modified, scrawled in bold letters, "Work
while it is day, for the knight cometh when no man can
work."
As a professor, Lord Kelvin was mercurial. "Let's
put an end to the reading of stale essays," he would say.
His classroom and laboratory were full of all kinds of
gadgets. In one corner, suspended from the ceiling, was
a rubber-covered metal ring with which he used to dem-
onstrate the nature of a dew-drop. One day during a
class, he started pouring water into the ring till it bulged

downward dangerously. But Kelvin wouldn't stop. He
continued pouring water till the rubber finally burst like
an 'over-burdened dew-drop', right over the heads of his
students. A quick-witted Lord Kelvin retorted, "I like my
illustrations to soak in."
Lord Kelvin had mastered thermodynamics, not only
in the outer atmosphere, but also in his own body. He
considered life to be "all a matter of temperature" and
wore a woollen vest "as a sort of thermostat to regulate
the temperature of the body". Whenever he felt cold, he
used to put on eight or nine vests and remove them one
by one, when he began feeling warmer. His principle, in
his own words, was: "To every man his proper vest—to
suit his time and temper best."
Lord Kelvin was greatly prejudiced against "the
muddled human system of weights and measures". Once
he was getting ready with some of his students to shoot
at a swinging pendulum. He asked one of his assistants
to load the rifle with a dram of gun-powder, referring to
the 'avoirdupois' dram measure. But his assistant mis-
understood it to be the apothecaries one, which inciden-
tally is twice the other. Kelvin took careful aim with the
overloaded gun and was just about to press the trigger
when he realised his assistant's mistake. The powder was
enough to blow off the heads of all those present there.
"I have always been suspicious of the words and works
of the human mind," was his only caustic comment.
Lord Kelvin's capacity for work grew with age. "A
second is too short, we must have longer units," he would
complain. When he dictated notes, he would have three
or four secretaries surrounding him, each one taking notes
on a different subject. He would keep giving orders,
shouting excitedly and gesticulating wildly until his par-
rot Dr Hookbeak would shout from its cage, "Lord Kelvin,
Lord Kelvin, shut up."
Lord Kelvin left his professorship at the age of
seventy-six. But he did not leave the university. At the

beginning of that academic year, an old man walked into
the registration room along with a crowd of undergradu-
ates and signed on the register, 'Lord Kelvin—research
student'.
KEPLER, JOHANNES
Kepler was a German astronomer whose studies of the
motions of the planet helped lay the foundation of mod-
ern astronomy. After completing his studies at the Uni-
versity of Tubingen, he became professor of mathematics
at Graz, in 1594, where he also lectured on Virgil (Roman
poet) and rhetoric. Kepler presented an ingenious con-
cept in his first book, Mysterium Cosmographicum, in which
he said that between the spheres of the six planets, there
could be fitted five regular geometrical solids. He be-
lieved he had discovered a basic order underlying the
distances of the planets from the sun. The year 1600 marked
Kepler's momentous meeting with his contemporary Tycho
Brahe, in Prague. Following Brahe's death, he consoli-
dated his monumental work on Mars and developed his
three famous planetary laws that transformed the sci-

ence of astronomy.
Johannes Kepler's grandfather was said to have been
of noble blood, although this is difficult to believe from
the record of all the members of the family—Johannes'
father was a mercenary adventurer who narrowly es-
caped the gallows; his mother Katherine, an innkeeper's
daughter, was brought up by an aunt who was burnt
alive as a witch; and Katherine herself, accused in old
age of consorting with the devil, had a narrow escape
from the gallows! Johannes had six brothers and sisters,
out of whom three died in childhood. Johannes' brother
Heinrich gained considerable notoriety at the time, as a
result of all his misadventures. He was frequently bitten
by animals, nearly drowned and nearly burnt alive. He
was apprenticed to a draper, then a baker, and finally he
ran away from home when his father threatened to sell
him!
Kepler himself was a very sickly child, with thin
limbs and a face that was too large. He suffered from
chronic problems of the stomach and gall bladder and
chronic piles, which made him unable to sit for any length
of time. At times, Kepler kept walking up and down the
whole day. Moreover, he was born with defective eye-
sight, acute myopia plus multiple vision, and he saw the
world sometimes doubled and at other times, quadrupled.
Yet he became the founder of modern optics and invented
the modern astronomical telescope. In fact the very word
dioptres is derived from the title of one of Kepler's
books!
Kepler's misfortune plagued him all his life. Before
his journey to Wuerttemberg, Kepler's friends in Gratz
had found a prospective bride for the young man—the
daughter of a rich mill-owner, twice widowed at the age
of twenty-three. After nine months, their first child was
born who died two months later of cerebral meningitis.
The next one, a girl this time, died of the same disease.
His wife lived to be thirty-seven and died with a dis-

traught mind. Kepler maintained that he had expected
nothing else from the marriage except calamity as the
horoscopes he had seen had predicted!
KOCH, ROBERT
The life history and achievements of Dr Robert Koch make
a fascinating story in the annals of medicine. The evening
of 24 March 1882 marked an important milestone in the
history of medicine in general and of tuberculosis in
particular. That evening, at a meeting of the Physiologi-
cal Society in Berlin, attended by distinguished scientists
and doctors, Dr Robert Koch presented his well-worded
paper announcing the discovery of the organism that
caused tuberculosis.
Robert Koch was born on 11 December 1843 at
Clausthal, in the beautiful Harz mountains of Germany.
His father was a mining engineer and Robert Koch was
the third of thirteen children. He had his early education
in the local gymnasium, after which he went to Gottingen
for the study of medicine. Koch graduated in medicine
with honours in 1866, after which he briefly worked at
Gottingen University. He also had the opportunity of
working under such famous teachers as Ludwig and
Virchow. Thereafter, he started private practice in his
native village, but subsequently he worked in a hospital
in Hamburg. Later, Koch worked as a military surgeon
during the Franco-Prussian war.
His experience as a district medical officer in
Woolstein, where his duties included reporting on epi-
demics and epizootics and vaccination encouraged him
to undertake research. With the help of a microscope
presented by his wife on his birthday, he set up a small
laboratory in his house. One historian commented that
Koch used his kitchen-table as his laboratory bench and
the pots and pans meant for cooking his food, for mak-
ing food for the bugs he was cultivating. The first dis-
covery made by him consisted of cultivation of anthrax
bacilli. Ferdinand Cohn, professor of botany at Brestan,
his teacher and friend was impressed by the quality of
his work and is said to have remarked to his students,
"Leave all your researches, all of you, and go to see Koch's
demonstrations. This man has accomplished a great thing,
which...merits the highest appreciations from us all." Koch
also demonstrated his findings to his old teacher Virchow,
in Berlin. Unfortunately he got a very hostile reception
and thereafter, the two great men remained enemies
throughout life.
The discovery of Koch relating to anthrax bacilli
marked a turning point in his life and he was soon ab-
sorbed in the Imperial Health Institute in Berlin as its
Director and at the age of forty-two he was appointed
professor of hygiene and bacteriology at the University
of Berlin. In 1876, he visited Egypt and India as head of
the German Cholera Commission. He was awarded 1,00,000
Marks by the Prussian State. Then in 1896 he carried out
investigations on rinderpest in South Africa and also made
studies in Texas fever, black water fever, tropical malaria
and plague. He continued his work, winning laurels all
along, culminating in award of the Nobel Prize in 1905.
As regards his personal life, he married, in 1876, a
woman called Emily Fraatz, a friend of his childhood in
Clausthal. In the beginning it was a Very happy mar-
riage and he had a daughter from this marriage in 1868.
In 1890, he bought his parental home in Clausthal. How-
ever in 1897, after twenty-one years of married life, the
relationship broke down resulting in divorce. While some
say that his wife felt neglected and decided to divorce
him owing to his obsession with bacteriological research,
others say that he had started an affair with a young
actress which precipitated divorce". Two months after di-
vorce, Koch married Fraulein Freiburg, the young actress
at the age of fifty while the lady was only twenty-one.

The second marriage was followed by unwarranted so-
cial boycott which forced him to spend most of his time
in travelling abroad. He visited Japan, Egypt, India, In-
donesia, Africa and other countries mainly with a view
to studying diseases caused by bacterial infections and
attempting to isolate the organism which caused them.
Koch died in March 1910 following a heart attack.
The revolutionary findings of Dr Koch were lauded
by scientists all over the world. It is of special interest to
note some of the observations made by Elias Metchnikoff,
another great scientist who discovered phagocytosis, about
the contribution made by Dr Koch to medical science. In
his book entitled Founders of Modern Medicine: Lister-Pasteur-
Koch, Metchnikoff stresses that all the progress in treat-
ment and control of infectious diseases upto that time
had been achieved as a result of the contributions of Pasteur
and Koch. According to him, "The technique developed
by Koch offered the opportunity of discovering the en-
fire world of the organisms causing infectious diseases...the
situation has changed drastically after Koch discovered
the cholera-vibrio." Describing Koch's visit to Paris,
Metchnikoff commented that the former showed his
knowledge and good taste in art. In general he appeared
to be not just an expert in his narrow field but was well
read in different fields of knowledge.
The respect shown by Metchnikoff to Koch and the
admiration with which he has spoken of Koch, especially
keeping in view the fact that Koch had cold-shouldered
him when initially he wanted to show his preparation to
Koch, is a shining testimony of the real calibre of Koch.
John M. Grange and Patrick J. Bishop of Brompton Hos-
pital, London, in their article published in March 1982
issue of Tubercle, the international journal on tuberculo-
sis, wrote that Koch was a most thorough man in all his
undertakings and that the acceptance of Koch's discov-
ery was helped by the high esteem in which he was
already held and by his reputation for technical thor-

oughness. A leading article in British Medical Journal
appearing on 29 April 1882, stated, "He (Koch) is a worker
in whose observations and accuracy the most implicit
reliance can be placed and those who have had the plea-
sure of seeing him at work will hesitate before they find
fault with his statements."
Experience shows that throughout the history of
science, new ideas, theories or discoveries have always
been received with great scepticism, outright rejection
and even hostility. The discovery of the tubercle bacillus
was no exception. Fully aware of his general apathy and
inherent feelings of jealousy in humans, Koch himself
felt that it will take at least two generations for his for-
mulations to be accepted completely. However, recogni-
tion of Koch's work was amazingly rapid and he was
fortunate to experience acceptance of his ideas during
his lifetime.
LALANDE, JOSEPH JEROME LE FRANCAISE DE

Lalande was a French astronomer, who is best known as
populariser of astronomy. He published, in 1759, a cor-
rect edition of Halley's tables, with a history of the cel-
ebrated comet whose return in that year he had helped
A.C. Clairaut to calculate. In 1762, he became professor
of astronomy in the College de France, where he stayed
for forty-six years. His house was an astronomical semi-
nary and among his pupils were Delambre, Piazzi, Mechain
and his own nephew Michel Lalande. The Lalande Prize,
instituted by him in 1802, for the chief astronomical per-
formance of each year, still continues.
During the 'reign of terror', Lalande confined him-
self to the study of science, without moving out at all.
Later, when someone asked him how he managed to
escape the fate that befell so many scientists during the
terrible period, Lalande replied, "I must thank my stars."
LAVOISIER, ANTOINE LAURENT

Chemist (1743-1794)
Lavoisier the French chemist, economist, and public ser-
vant is noted especially for his discovery of the role of
oxygen in combustion. After an education in mathemat-
ics, physics and astronomy, Lavoisier studied law and in
the years 1763-1767, he accompanied the noted geologist
Jean-Etienne Guettard on geological expeditions in northern
France. He published three papers upon his return on
the chemical nature of gypsum, a study of waysK) im-
prove the street-lighting of Paris, and a study on mineral
water. These got him elected to the Royal Academy of
Science in 1768.
In 1777, he showed that nitric, sulphuric and phos-
phoric acids contain 'eminently respirable air'. I^voisier
accordingly named the gas oxygen, from the Greek word
for 'begetter of acids'. Lavoisier also showed that in res-
piration, oxygen is consumed and carbon dioxide given
off. In 1783, he began a series of experiments with the
mathematician Laplace that supported the theory that
respiration is slow combustion.
In 1787, Lavoisier and his colleagues brought out a

cooperative work, Method of Chemical Nomenclature. Two
years later, he published his classic work, Elementary Treatise
of Chemistry. Lavoisier was also a master of finance and
was consequently appointed Director of the Discount Bank.
During the French revolution, he published a report on
the state of French finances and a classic statistical study
of the economic resources of the country. He also played
an important part in devising the metric system of weights
and measures.
On 27 January 1791, Lavoisier was subjected to a
bitter and virulent attack in a French newspaper. The
reason given was that years earlier he had dared to give
his frank opinion on a fraudulent scientific treatise written
by a man who was now the editor of the paper. Lavoisier
paid little attention to the defaming article, dismissing it
as "theoutburst of wounded pride". However before long,
Marat the editor, was joined by a number of other radicals
who passed a decree to have the Academy of Science
closed down. When Lavoisier, Director of the academy,
denounced the decree, he was promptly arrested. From
there, on the ridiculous charge of "plotting with foreign
nations", he was condemned to death.
"I have lived a reasonably long and happy life,"
wrote Lavoisier from his prison cell. "I shall be spared
the inconvenience of old age, and I shall leave behind me
a little knowledge and perhaps a little glory. What more
can one expect in this world?"
In December 1793, Laovoisier was imprisoned on
fraudulent charges, tried, convicted and executed on 8
May 1794. The story is told that Lavoisier appealed at his
trial for time to complete some important scientific work,
but the presiding judge replied, "The republic has no
need of scientists."
Lavoisier was to be guillotined on May 8 morning
in 1794. Just before the final moment he wrote a small
note to his wife: "Take care of your health, my dear, and
138 OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
remember that I have finished my work. Thank God for

that."
As he was led away, Joseph Louis Lagrange remarked
to Delambre, "Only a moment to cut off his head, and
perhaps a century before we shall have another like it."
LINNAEUS, CARL
Botanist (1707-1778)
The Swedish botanist and physician, who pioneered the
nomenclature system in biology and provided ways to
handle and organise systematic information, studied botany
in the Netherlands, which at that time was the centre for
botanical studies in Europe.
In 1735, he obtained his M.D. from the University of
Harderwijk and in the same year introduced the concept
of binomial nomenclature for plants in his work, Species
Plantarum. Three years later, he applied the concept to
animals in Systema Naturae. His coding system replaced
the earlier system of descriptive names by a binomial
name, consisting of a Latin or Greek generic name fol-
lowed by a specific epithet. Linnaeus returned to Swe-
den in 1738 and established himself in Stockholm as a
practising physician and professor of botany at the Uni-

versity of Uppsala.
In the same year that he published his Systema Naturae,
Linnaeus had a fortuitous meeting with a certain George
Clifford, an extremely wealthy Amsterdam banker. Clifford
hired Linnaeus to be his personal physician and to de-
scribe his collections of plants and animals on his enor-
mous estate, de Hartecamp, near Haarlem. Linnaeus spent
two years at the estate, not only producing a folio—Hortus
Cliffortianus—describing all the plants in Clifford's gar-
den, but also finished and published all the manuscripts
he had brought with him from Sweden!
In the early years after he published his new no-
menclature system, Linnaeus was often ridiculed on his
work. Baron Georges Cuvier, for instance, refused to
acknowledge the importance of Linnaeus' pioneering work
by exclaiming, "What difference does it make what you
call them? The business of a scientist is to understand,
not to name."
Few people outside his native Sweden had heard of
Linnaeus even after the publication of his Systema Naturae
in 1735. Three years later, he visited the Jardine des Plantes
in Paris, where the noted French botanist Bernard de
Jussieu, was lecturing on rare plants. In the course of his
lecture, he came across a plant he had not yet identified.
Wanting to help him out, Linnaeus spoke from the audi-
ence, "Haec planta faciem Americanum habet."
The professor stared for some time at the figure in the
audience and said slowly, "Are you, by any chance, Linnaeus?"
"I am, Sir," replied the Swedish naturalist.
Forgetting his lecture, Bernard rushed up to Linnaeus
and warmly embraced him.
LISTER, LORD JOSEPH

Surgeon (1827-1912)
Lister was a British surgeon, who was responsible for the
development of antiseptic surgery. Lister received his

medical degree from University College, London and
became professor of surgery at Edinburgh and later at
King's College Hospital. At that time surgical complica-
tions such as gangrene, pyaemia and erysipelas were
common. Taking the cue from Louis Pasteur's work on
micro-organisms in fermentation processes, Lister pre-
dicted that minute germs also cause infections and so
went on to develop techniques of antiseptic surgery. This
slowly gained acceptance in England and the United States.
Lister helped establish the British Institute of Preventive
Medicine in 1893, which was renamed the Lister Institute
after his death.
Lister struck upon carbolic acid as being a disinfec-
tant that would prevent all the post-operative problems
of infection that were so rampant earlier. He introduced
a somewhat complex system involving carbolic acid dress-
ings, the cleansing of instruments and ligatures in car-
bolic solutions, and finally, spraying the air around the
operating table with the acid, which amused his staff as
the process involved Lister jumping up and down around
the table!
William Fergusson was perhaps the greatest surgeon
of early 19th century in England. Though a contempo-
rary of Robert Lister, they were poles apart. Once, in the
operation theatre of King's College Hospital in London,
Fergusson performed an operation that was loudly ap-
plauded by the select audience present. Like a seasoned
professional actor, Fergusson acknowledged the
applause by repeatedly bowing before the gathering. Some
days later, Lister did a similar operation, "with more
than his usual speed and dexterity", and received an
even greater ovation. In response, he only silenced the
gathering, saying sternly, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, remem-
ber where you are...this is an operation theatre, not that
theatre!"
Lister was the first physician to be elevated to the
House of Lords, as Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. The honour

was bestowed upon him by Queen Victoria, who hap-
pened to be a former patient of his.
LORENZ, KONRAD
Zoologist (1903- )
Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist and founder of modern
ethology, promoted the comparative zoological study of
animal and human behaviour. Lorenz received his M.D.
in 1928, and his Ph.D. in 1933, both from the University
of Vienna. In 1950, he founded a comparative ethology
institute in the Max Planck Institute in Bildern. He began
his scientific work by elaborating and applying earlier
concepts of animal behaviour to his own detailed obser-
vations of the behaviour of several animals. His more
recent research involves the genetically based abilities of
particular species to learn specific things. Lorenz has
developed and inspired concepts relating to genetics,
physiology, evolution of behaviour in species. His books,
Man Meets Dog, King Solomon's Ring and On Aggression
have been widely acclaimed.
Statistical records show that geese pair for life. How-
ever, Konrad Lorenz found that there were also quite a
few broken partnerships among these birds. When he
commented on this, his assistant Helen Fisher promptly
retorted, "Well, what do you expect? After all, geese are
only human."
Lorenz was once conducting an experiment in audi-
tory stimuli. He uttered a few duck-like quacks near a
newly-hatched clutch of mallards to discover that they
promptly followed him wherever he went. One day, he
was waddling and quacking away when a group of tour-
ists suddenly appeared and looked over the fence. His
behaviour must have seemed all the more incomprehen-
sible as the ducklings were all well hidden in the tall
grass!
MAHALANOBIS, P.C.
The Vishva-Bharati at Shantiniketan in Calcutta was for-
mally inaugurated as a public institution on 22 Decem-
ber 1921 with Rabindranath Tagore as founder-president
and his son Rathindranath Tagore and P.C. Mahalanobis
as its secretaries. Mahalanobis had a very big hand in
drafting the first constitution of the Vishva-Bharati which
was not changed till the new constitution of the Vishva-
Bharati University was framed. He was its secretary for
about ten years and helped considerably in organising
its work and placing it on a firm foundation.
MARGULIS, LYNN
Microbiologist (1940- )
American microbiologist and co-author of the modern
Gaia theory with Sir James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis is
one of the youngest women ever elected to the American
National Academy of Sciences. She was recently named
in a Newsweek cover story as one of the top twenty-five
American innovators. She is an accomplished microbi-
ologist who believes that the best way to understand the
mechanisms and effects of life's continuous pressure on
the environment is to study micro-organisms in their most

fundamental microbial form.
For a woman who is clearly ahead of her time, Lynn
Margulis had a conventionally early marriage and at the
age of twenty-two, had a son and was pregnant with a
second child. She followed her husband, the famous
Carl Sagan, to the University of California and enrolled
in the doctoral programme on genetics. Soon, however,
her world took a turn as she began challenging the
works of Darwin and Mendel, with very little support
from her male colleagues. Her marriage broke up and
she had two children to support and an exciting hunch
about what she thinks is the universal characteristic of
intra-cellular symbiosis. Working late at night, after the
children had fallen asleep, Margulis blazed a new trail in
microbiology.
MAXWELL, JAMES CLARK

Maxwell was a Scottish physicist, who is remembered
for his research in electricity.
Maxwell was born in a well-known Scottish family
and was educated at Edinburgh University and Trinity
College, Cambridge. After being professor of physics and
astronomy at King's College, London, he was given the
chair of experimental physics at Cambridge, and it was
under Maxwell's supervision, that the legendary Cavendish
laboratory was constructed. Maxwell's electrical theory
appeared in 1873 in his Treatise on Electricity and Magne-
tism, which is recognised as one of the great monuments
of scientific writing. Among his other writings are, Theory
of Heat arid Matter and Motion.
James Maxwell entered Cambridge at the age of
eighteen, where he worked hard for his degree. He was
also famous for his strange theories, especially the one
relating to sleeping habits. Maxwell would sleep from 5
to 9:30 p.m., study from 10 to 2 a.m., exercise by running

through the corridors and up and down the staircase
from 2 to 2:30 a.m., and sleep again until 7 a.m. The
other residents were merely stunned initially, but when
the young Maxwell persisted in this uncommon routine,
he was greeted by a barrage of shoes and other flying
objects when he ran past rooms, bringing his theory to
an abrupt end!
James Maxwell was a born scientist. To the utter
astonishment of his family, he started making his own
scientific toys at the age of seven! At the age of fourteen,
he wrote a paper on a new method of constructing per-
fectly oval curves. Such was the impact of the paper that
it was read out to the members of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh by James Forbes!
Maxwell was showing his scientist friend Kelvin a
particular optical experiment. Kelvin, on looking through
the eyepiece, seemed satisfied with the phenomenon but
asked Maxwell why he was observing a human figure
dancing about. Maxwell asked him to look again. But
again Kelvin observed the same picture and asked, "But,
what is the little man there for?"
Maxwell replied, "Just for fun."
Maxwell once asked Isaac Todhunter to look through
his apparatus for a mathematical equation, but failed to
persuade Todhunter, for he refused by saying, "I have
taught this subject for so long that I do not want my
ideas to be upset."
McCLINTOCK, BARBARA
Geneticist (1905- )
This American geneticist received the 1983 Nobel Prize
for medicine, for her discovery that genes move from
one spot to another on the chromosomes .of a plant and
change the future generation of plants. Barbara McClintock
was educated at Cornell University, receiving her Ph.D.
in botany. In 1931, she and Harriet Creighton made a

landmark discovery by proving that when two cells of
corn are crossed genetically, they also exchange chromo-
some material. In 1941, Barbara McClintock joined the
staff of the Carnegie Institution's Cold Spring Harbour
laboratory in New York. In 1944, she began to study
what she later called 'transcription genes' or 'jumping
genes'.
Barbara McClintock made a discovery in 1944 that a
gene could move spontaneously to another part of its
chromosome or even another chromosome, which helped
explain some baffling genetic changes. However, the sci-
entific community was totally unprepared for such a
revolutionary discovery, and she had to wait for more
than twenty years before she received any support from
her fellow-geneticists. And the Nobel Prize had to wait
another twenty years!
Barbara McClintock was seventy-nine when she re-
ceived the Nobel Prize. At the press conference that fol-
lowed, she was asked what she intended to do with the
windfall of money. To which, she replied wryly, "When
I was much younger, I used to say I wanted two things—
to own an automobile and spectacles. Now I just want
my spectacles."
MENDEL, GREGOR
Botanist (1822-1884)
The Austrian monk, who was the first to formulate the laws
of heredity that became the basis for modern genetic sci-
ence, entered the monastery at Bruno, in Czechoslovakia,
mainly because of financial difficulties in his family, and
was ordained a priest in 1847. After a rather short and
unhappy stint as chaplain of a local hospital, Mendel was
appointed teacher at a nearby school. He was later sent
to the University of Vienna, where he studied science
and mathematics, and although he never passed the
examination for teacher certification, he came back and taught

physics and natural history at the Technical High School in
Bruno.
Mendel is best known for the experiments he carried
out in plant hybridisation, in the monastery gardens. His
most successful experiment was with the garden pea. Us-
ing elementary statistical methods, Mendel showed that cross-
breeding large numbers of distinct varieties of peas yielded
simple and repeatable ratios of some simple character, such
as height, shape, etc. in their offspring. Mendel presented
and published his findings in 1865, but unfortunately it all
went unnoticed. He also made other studies of hybridisation,
but the pressures of his position as abbot soon forced him
to abandon his experiments.
When he was a school-teacher, Gregor Mendel had
to appear for an examination at the University of Vienna,
in order to secure a permanent appointment in the school.
In his first attempt, the examiners failed him with the
comment, "He has not mastered this subject sufficiently
to qualify as a teacher in the high schools." Disappointed,
Mendel went back to his books and several months later,
appeared a second time. Again the examiners failed him
with the verdict: "This examination paper would hardly
allow us to regard the candidate as competent to become
an instructor even in the lower schools." In doing so, the

examiners passed judgment on someone who went on to
become one of the greatest biologists in history!
Mendel was always a great hit with his pupils. They
came to his class, not so much to imbibe his knowledge,
as to have a good laugh over his anecdotes. Once when
the circus came to town, Mendel took his entire class to
have, what he called, 'a chat with the animals'. However,
one of these chats proved of a slightly more serious nature
for Mendel. In an effort to attract the attention of a group
of monkeys, he strayed too close to the bars. And one of
the monkeys, a rather huge fellow, snatched off his spec-
tacles. It was with great difficulty and a lot of painful
injuries that Mendel could get them back from the mon-
key. But once he had retrieved them, he had a good
laugh with his students, over his 'wrestling match' with
the monkey, despite the pain!
It was the evening of 8 February 1865. Gregor Johann
Mendel put his round black hat on his head, his heavy
black cloak over his shoulders and stepped out of the
door of the monastery into the cold wintry air. As he
trudged along the icy roads, Mendel tightened his grip
on a pouch that contained a sheaf of folded papers. That
night he was to read his report on eight years of pains-
taking research on the growth of plants. He wondered
how many in the audience would understand the title of
his report, Plant Hybridisation, let alone its complex con-
tents. The meeting began and Mendel was invited to the
platform to present his findings. As he proceeded, Mendel
looked about him to see whether his audience shared the
inner excitement he had felt in making these discoveries
about the heredity of pea plants. They were only politely
listening, tinged unmistakably with boredom. A man
leaned towards his neighbour and whispered, "Eight years
spent in watching ordinary peas grow—what a waste of
time!" When Mendel sat down, there was hardly a mur-
mur of acknowledgment. The secretary called for the
next report. It was to take the world sixteen years after

Mendel's death to realise the significance of what he had
done; the 'waste of time' was the foundation for the modern
science of genetics!
Mendel spent the last few years of his life experi-
menting with bees. He had attached a mesh cage to the
beehives of his monastery, and had placed a lot of bees
in the cage. One of the visitors asked him the reason for
this segregation. He jokingly replied. "I have put a queen
there, together with a number of drones. The queen is
choosing a proper husband, for it is just as unfortunate
among bees as it is among human beings when a good
woman is married to a bad man."
MENDELEEV, DMITRI IVANOVICH

Chemist (1834-1907)
Mendeleev is the Russian chemist who formulated the
chemical periodic table, which has remained the most
important organising principle in chemistry. Mendeleev
studied chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg,
receiving his Ph.D. in 1865. He became the professor of
general chemistry in 1867 and after two years of teaching
inorganic chemistry, introduced his model of the peri-
odic table. In addition to his academic activities, Mendeleev
participated in the early development of oilfields in south-
ern Russia and even visited the United States in 1876 to
study the petroleum industry there. He resigned from
the university in 1890, as a sign of his support for a
group of student activists in their unrest against conser-
vative academic policies. After that he was mainly con-
cerned with the Russian industry, particularly in the area
of ship-building.
One of Mendeleev's most remarkable personal fea-
tures was his flowing abundance of hair. The reason for
the overgrowth was, apparently, his decision to have a
hair-cut only once a year in spring. The story goes that
when he was to be presented at the court of Emperor

Alexander 111, His Majesty was curious to know whether
the occasion might prompt Mendeleev to break his rule
of the once-a-year hair-cut. On the appointed day, the
Emperor as well as his court-bearers waited in anticipa-
tion for the possibility of having a shorn Mendeleev appear
through the doorway. It was not to be. Mendeleev brought
his locks to the court.
Another curious trait of Mendeleev was the clothes
he wore. He was never seen in anything else for most of
his life than a large and baggy jacket without a belt,
made of dark grey cloth. The design was, of course, his
own creation.
Mendeleev's periodic table began by his arranging
chemical elements in the sequence of increasing weights
and noting that the chemical properties of the elements
were inadvertently grouped into already familiar fami-
lies. Occasionally, he left a blank space in order to locate
the next element in its proper family, and he correctly
predicted the properties of the unknown element that
would some day be found! During the next fifteen years,
the discovery of gallium, scandium and germanium, whose
properties matched what Mendeleev had predicted, es-
tablished the validity of the periodic table. In the 1890s
Sir William Ramsay kept searching for two inert gases
only because Mendeleev's table had predicted them, and
found xenon and krypton whose properties of course
matched what had been predicted. The same applied to
the working out of the radioactive decay series. The theo-
retical explanation for Mendeleev's table came a little less
than a hundred years later, with Bohr's work on atomic
theory!
Mendeleev willingly recognised Lothar Meyer's claim
to independent discovery. Once both scientists were asked
to speak before the British Association in 1887. Feeling
unable to address the audience in English, Mendeleev
simply rose and bowed to the group. Meyer then began
his speech by thanking the British scientists for their

hospitality. A thunderous applause followed, and fear-
ing lest a wrong impression be made, for he was to talk
of the periodic table, he began with the modest words,
"I am sorry, but I am not Mendeleev; I am Lothar
Meyer."
Mendeleev would never have been who he was had
it not been for the determination of his mother. His fa-
ther was a teacher of arts and literature at a local high
school in Siberia. However, he couldn't keep up the job
for long, because of his blindness. After that Mendeleev's
mother supported the family of nine by running a local
glass factory, owned by her brother. When he was four-
teen, the factory burned down, his father died and the
family became bankrupt. Undaunted, his mother slaved
away, sent young Dmitri to Moscow and then to the
University of St. Petersburg, convinced that there were
seeds of greatness in her boy. Till the end of his life,
Mendeleev always quoted his mother's dying words:
"Refrain from illusions, insist on work and not on words.
Patiently search the divine and scientific truth." And he
dedicated his famous book on solutions in her memory
to "a woman, who had instructed by example and cor-
rected with love", and who had spent her last resources
and strength in providing him with a scientific educa-
tion.
MILLIKAN, ROBERT ANDREW

This American physicist and educator was awarded the
1923 Nobel Prize for physics for his work on the elemen-
tary electric charge aYid on the photoelectric effect. Millikan
studied physics at Columbia University and later taught
at the University of Chicago. In 1909, he devised his famous
oil-drop experiment for determining the charge of an
electron. The experiment was carried out by suspending
two charged metal plates with tiny holes at the top,

horizontally. Oil was then sprayed into the space be-
tween the plates, and the droplets were then charged.
I h e charge was then measured on the basis of the rate of
ascent or descent of the droplets as the voltage between
the plates varied. In 1916, Millikan confirmed the photo-
electric equation of Einstein with another breathtakingly
simple experiment.
When Robert Millikan was still a sophomore stu-
dent at Oberlin College, he had no intention of ever tak-
ing up physics as a subject, let alone a career. One day,
his Greek professor asked Robert to teach some elemen-
tary physics in the class. Somewhat bewildered, he con-
fessed to the professor that he did not know any physics
at all. The professor replied, "You have done excellent
work all year in my Greek class; I'll risk anyone who can
do what you have done in Greek, to teach physics." Thus
began a scientific career for a Greek scholar!
Millikan's wife once happened to pass through the
hall of their home in time to hear the maid answer the
telephone. "Yes," Mrs Millikan overheard the maid say.
"This is where Dr Millikan lives, but he's not the kind of
doctor that does anybody any good."
MOND, LUDWIG
Chemist (1839-1909)
A new direction to the science of metallurgy, particularly
in the case of nickel, was given by this German-British
chemist. Mond gained a reputation of being able to work
wonders with metals, and had frequent visitors to his
workshop who came to see his ingenious techniques on
metallurgy.
The celebrated and eccentric scientist had settled in
England and introduced one of his most novel proposi-
tions: extreme heat and extreme cold produce identical
reactions on the skin. To prove its truth, he entered the
kitchen holding a long iron rod with a wooden handle.
There was a big fireplace that heated the rest of the house.
He put the iron rod into the blazing fire until it turned
red hot. The old cook, who was kneading the dough,
furtively looked across, wondering as to why the master
had come into the kitchen. Mond picked up the red hot
rod, flourished it above his head to the bewilderment of
the woman, and then suddenly when she was not look-
ing, he touched her bare neck with a piece of ice, where-
upon she started yelling, "I am burnt, I am burnt...!"
Ludwig Mond's young son Alfred once said, "The
nextdoor shop has a beautiful bicycle and I asked the
shopkeeper how much it cost. He says it is a penny, so
please give me one and I can have the bicycle."
Mond gave him the money and the youngster ran
away, only to rush back, saying, "He says this is not the
penny that can buy it; it is the penny that has the king's
face on both sides."
Mond's only reply was, "We shall see if such a penny
exists in my bag." He then went down to his workshop,
neatly sliced two pennies and joined the two head sides
together and put the oddity in his bag. He then called
out to Alfred and asked him to search his bag. Finding
the penny, Alfred raced to the shopkeeper, who had no
alternative but to sell the cycle to the youngster!
MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE

Artist-inventor (1791-1872)
The American artist and inventor, who pioneered the
development of the Morse code and the telegraph ma-
chine, began painting miniatures on ivory after graduat-
ing from Yale in 1810. He subsequently switched over to
painting portraits and many of his works are still exhib-
ited at Syracuse University and the Yale University Art-
Gallery. He was appointed professor of painting and
sculpture at New York University and also became the
first president of the National Academy of Arts and Design
in 1845. Morse was also the first to give a series of lec-
tures on art in the United States.
However, after 1837, his growing interest in the tele-
graph led to his break with painting and he painted only
one portrait after that. With the assistance of Leonard
Gale, he constructed a model of a telegraph machine and
gave the first real demonstration on 2 September 1837.
The most important feature of Morse's telegraph was the
use of an electromagnet at the receiver. In April 1838, a
bill was introduced in the Congress to grant US $ 30,000
for the construction of a line between Washington and
Baltimore. Despite difficulties in insulating the wires, the
line was constructed with the aid of Ezra Cornell and the
first message was sent by Morse on 24 May 1844, usher-
ing in a new era of long-distance transmission. The message,
ironically enough, read as follows: "What hath God
wrought!"
Samuel Morse once painted a man in the throes of
death and asked a physician friend to take a look. "Well?"
inquired Morse after the doctor had scrutinised the paint-
ing. 'What's your opinion?"
The doctor removed his spectacles, turned to Morse
and replied, "Malaria."
MOSELEY, HENRY GWYN-JEFFREYS

Moseley, the British physicist who did pioneering work
on spectrum analysis, discovered a fundamental relation-
ship between the atomic numbers of elements and their
X-ray spectra. Moseley graduated from Oxford Univer-
sity in 1910 and worked with Lord Rutherford from 1912
to 1914. Moseley demonstrated that his X-ray technique
was capable of locating all the gaps in the periodic table
that represented still undiscovered elements, seven ?t the
time. His concept of atomic number made it possible to
insert the rare earth elements in the places 57 to 71 in the
table. Moseley also concluded correctly that there were
only ninety-two elements that included uranium.
While working in Lord Rutherford's laboratory, Moseley
would often get annoyed with his colleagues for borrowing
his matches regularly. He finally came up with a solution.
He purchased a large carton of match-boxes and put them
in an open packing case at the corner of his table. On the
case Moseley hung a sign that read: 'Please take one of
these boxes and leave my matches alone!'
A year after he had announced his landmark dis-
covery, Moseley joined the British Army and was sent to
the front lines. Before leaving, he gave precise instruc-
tions to his colleagues about certain experiments to be
performed until he returned.
It was most unfortunate that at a very young age
the Great War claimed him a victim of a bullet shot at
Dardanelles, on the Turkish front, on 10 August 1915.
The British government realising that one of the most
brilliant brains was in danger on the war front, sent a
telegram for his release but it was received after his tragic
death. The poet's fancy rarely rides on such an event:
Beyond the violets seek him, for there in the dark he
dwells,
Holding the crystal lattice to cast the shadow that
tells.
How the heart of the atom thickens, ready to burst

into flowers,
Loosing the bands of Orion with heavenly heat and
power.
He numbers the charge on the centre for each of the
elements
That we named for gods and demons, colours and
tastes and scents...
Michelson said about this sad event that the Euro-
pean war, which resulted in snuffing out such a young
life, should be held responsible for making it one of the
most hideous crimes in history.
MULLER, HERMANN JOSEPH

This American biologist won the 1946 Nobel Prize in
medicine for his discovery of the production of muta-
tions by X-ray irradiation. Muller studied biology at
Columbia University, where after graduation he became
a member of T.H. Morgan's prestigious genetic research
group. Muller began his genetic experiments with his
studies of the fruit fly and demonstrated that X-ray
mutations take place as a result of changes within indi-
vidual genes and chromosome breakage. His discovery
had the important consequence that it stressed the neces-
sity of minimising human exposure to radiation of any
kind and it also made it possible for scientists to create
large numbers of mutations at will. Muller's work also
filled one of the last major gaps in the evidence of Darwin's
theory of natural selection.
When German scientists, like their Russian colleagues
under Stalin, were being persecuted, Muller issued a strong
protest in the name of geneticists throughout the world.
"Good or bad genes," said Muller, "are not the monopoly
of particular peoples or of persons with features of a
given kind."
NERNST, WALTHER HERMANN

Chemist (1864-1941)
Nernst was the German physical chemist to be awarded
the 1920 Nobel Prize for chemistry, for his work on thermo-
chemistry. Nernst was a professor of physical chemistry
at the University of Gottingen and later became Director
of the Institute of Experimental Physics at Berlin. Nernst
put forward his famous heat theorem in 1906-1907, which
came to be known as the Third Law of Thermodynamics.
As given by Nernst, the law states that at a temperature
of absolute zero, the entropy of every substance in per-
fect equilibrium is zero. Nernst is also credited with the
invention of an incandescent lamp and a piano that had
electronic amplification of its sounds.
Nernst once had the honour of demonstrating to the
German Emperor and Empress how radio transmission
works. The transmitter was in the Institute of Experi-
mental Physics, and the royal couple were sitting next to
a receiver in their castle. After a great deal of speculation
over what would be appropriate enough to be transmit-
ted, Nernst finally chose a phonograph record of the famous
Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. Later in the day, Nernst was
invited to the castle. The Empress warmly congratulated
him on the successful demonstration, adding, "By the
way, good professor, we didn't know that you were such
a fine singer!"
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC

Scientist (1642-1727)
Newton was Britain's natural philosopher who is gener-
ally regarded as the most original and influential thinker
in the history of science. Among his very many amazing
achievements are his invention of the calculus, his theoiy
of light and colour, the three laws of motion and the lav/
of universal gravitation. As the son of an illiterate yeo-
man, Newton had an utterly unhappy childhood.
Once every week, when Newton was a young boy,

he would accompany the servant to the market. But when
they approached the market, Newton would plead with
the servant to allow him to stay behind. "You'll find me
here on the way back," he would say. "I shall be study-
ing my books behind the hedge."
One day, Isaac's uncle became suspicious of his all-
too-frequent market trips, and followed him to the mar-
ket. He found his nephew lying on the grass, completely
engrossed in some mathematical problem. The old man
looked at him gently and said, "Go back to your studies,
Isaac. Either you are a great loafer or a great genius—the
Lord alone knows which."
Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas
day in 1642, 'small enough to fit into a quart pot', a few
months after his illiterate father had died. When he was
barely three years old, his mother left him in the care of
his grandmother, so that she could be free to marry again.
He hated his stepfather and longed for maternal love
which he never received and his childhood was anything
but happy. Throughout his life, he was on the verge of
emotional breakdowns, occasionally falling into violent
and vindictive attacks on his friends and colleagues.
Being terrible at athletics, Newton once decided to

skip a sports meet while at Cambridge. He was, how-
ever, forced to participate. It was then that the scientist
in him helped him. He noted that a gusty wind was
blowing when he entered the field. Newton lost his ner-
vousness, and took, what he described later as "timid
leaps to take advantage of the gusts", and won the event.
Newton was once gently holding the hand of a woman
he was in love with, looking deep into her eyes. His
mind, however, was on the binomial theorem for infinite
quantities. Lost in thought, he took the lady's finger to
be his pipe-cleaner and started pushing it up the stem of
his pipe, which he had just smoked. Only when she cried
out in anguish, did Newton realise what he had been
doing. Apologising profusely in embarrassment, he
excalimed, 'This is how I find myself at fault. 1 find that
I am cursed to remain a bachelor."
Newton also had a strange sense of practical values.
Once a guest at his house showed him a prism and asked
him to ascertain its practical value. Immediately sensing
its potential as an object of scientific research, Newton
replied, ' T h e value is so great that I cannot even ascer-
tain it." Upon hearing this, the visitor offered to sell the
prism to him at an exorbitant price, whereupon Newton
immediately accepted the offer. When his house-keeper
saw what he had bought, she rebuked him and said,
"Why, you silly man, you need only have paid a price
according to the weight of the glass!" Newton only shook
his head and smiled. That purchase was to lead him to
formulate his theory of colour!
Isaac Newton went to Cambridge in 1661, where he
became deeply engrossed with the works of Descartes,
Euclid, Hobbes and Gassendi. In the two plague years of
1665 and 1666, when Cambridge was closed down, New-
ton conceived his method of calculus, laid the founda-
tions for his theory of colour and made significant in-
roads into planetary motion that eventually led to his
classic work, Principia Mathematica, in 1687. After this

publication, he became involved in public affairs, enjoy-
ing power and worldly success. In 1696, Newton was
appointed warden and later, master of the mint, and he
left Cambridge without regret. In 1704, he published his
second classic work, Optiks and was knighted in 1705.
In 1678, Newton suffered a serious emotional break-
down, and in the following year his mother died. His
response was to cut off all contact with others and en-
gross himself in alchemical research. While the mechani-
cal philosophers reduced all phenomena to the impact of
matter in motion, the alchemical tradition upheld the
possibility of attraction and repulsion at the particulate
level. Newton's later insights in celestial mechanics can
be traced in part to his days of alchemy. He transformed
the prevailing mechanical philosophy by adding a mys-
terious quantity—gravitational force.
In August 1684. Edmond Halley paid a legendary
visit to Newton in Cambridge, hoping for an answer to
the riddle: What type of a curve does a planet describe
in its orbit around the sun?
When Halley posed the question, Newton's ready
response was 'an ellipse'. When asked how he knew it,
Newton replied that he had already calculated it. How-
ever, he had mislaid the calculation and promised to work
it out again for Halley. What was to result after two
years of intense labour was the epic, the Philosopiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematical
Robert Hooke, the celebrated curator of the Royal
Society's experiments, was Newton's bete noire. Skirmish
after skirmish followed between the two. However, ironi-
cally, it was as a result of Hooke's letters that Newton
started working on the law of gravitation. But later, when
H9oke claimed that his letters of 1679-1680 had earned
him a role in Newton's discovery, it made Newton so
furious that he threatened to suppress the third book of
his Principia, denouncing science as "an impertinently
litigious lady". He eventually consented to its publica-

tion but systematically deleted every possible mention of
Hooke's name. Newton's hatred for Hooke was so con-
sumptive that he also held up the publication of his
Optiks (1704) and withdrew from the Royal Society until
Hooke's death in 1703! When asked why he hadn't had
his work published earlier, Newton replied, "I'll print
nothing, for that would only result in attracting acquain-
tances."
When Newton finally published his Principia, it was
incomprehensible to most people. A famous philosopher
of the time, finding the book too difficult to understand,
asked Newton to suggest a preliminary course to study
that might prepare him to understand the complex math-
ematics of the Principia. With graciousness, Newton drew
up a list of 'necessary books' for the philosopher. These
books were themselves so formidable that the philoso-
pher decided to give up, saying, "The reading of the
preliminary list alone would consume the greater part of
my life."
When he was criticised for making the universe appear
lifeless and arid in his theory of gravitation, Newton replied,
"The fact that the universe is so beautifully designed in
accordance with such harmonious laws...must presup-
pose the existence of a divine wisdom, the hand of a
divine Creator." When asked to clarify what he meant by
the last bit, he refused to comply. Instead he replied, "I
can frame no hypothesis about Him. I am a scientist and
I do not speculate about theological matters. I deal not
with God, but with his observable laws."
When he was studying at Cambridge, Newton's
housekeeper once came to him and said, "I have bought
seven fish at the rate of three pence each. Please tell me
how much I should pay the fish monger."
Newton promptly whipped out his logarithm tables,
worked out the problem and gave the solution. "The
amount should be between twenty and twenty-two pence."
"The man demands twenty-one pence," said the

housekeeper.
"What!" retorted Newton, "How did he arrive at
that? The fish monger is a greater mathematician. He has
got the answer quicker."
Newton used to have a pet dog named Diamond.
One day, a sudden movement by the dog caused a burn-
ing candle to fall on a pile of valuable manuscripts, that
were soon reduced to ashes. These manuscripts were the
only record of twenty years of his painstaking research.
All Newton did was to stroke the feline gently and say,
"Oh, Diamond, you do not know what mischief you have
done me!"
The story goes that Newton was so fond of a cat he
had that he cut a hole in one of the walls of his house to
make it convenient for its entry and exit. One day he saw
that she had kittens and in his usual philosophic absent-
mindedness, cut out a neat little hole (a much smaller
one) for the kittens!
In the later years of his life, Newton became ob-
sessed with establishing himself as a noble gentleman.
He once remarked casually to a distinguished Scottish
laird, "Do you know, that I too am a Scot? My grandfa-
ther was a gentleman of East Lothian...or was it West
Lothian? Perhaps it was my great grandfather..."
"Never heard of him," replied the laird bluntly.
Wrote Isaac Newton a short time before his death:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to
myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the
seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding
a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me."
NOBEL, ALFRED BERNHARD

Philanthropist-scientist (1833-1896)
The Swedish inventor, who became famous for his
invention of dynamite and other explosives, was the

founder of the Nobel Prize. Nobel was never formally
educated, but instead received private instruction. He then
began work in his father's factory from 1853 to 1859,
developing torpedoes and mines. His first successful
explosion with nitroglycerine was in 1862, when Nobel
set up a small factory near Stockholm for its manufac-
ture. One day, by a fortuitous turn of events, he was
delayed in going to the factory. His youngest brother
Erik was already there, supervising the manufacturing
process. And due to some unforseen accident, the entire
factory was blown to smithereens, leaving behind a mass
of rubble and smoke! After much modification it was
patented as 'dynamite' in 1876.
In 1888, he developed ballistite, a smokeless powder
produced from nitroglycerine. Nobel accumulated a vast
fortune from the manufacture of explosives, and from
oilfields in Russia, which were developed and managed
by his two elder brothers. When he died in San Remo,
Italy in 1896, he left the major portion of his fortune of
$ nine million for the establishment of annual awards for
men and women who confer the greatest benefit on
mankind in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology
or medicine, literature and peace.
Alfred Nobel was once asked to write an autobiog-

raphy. He replied that it was impossible for him to do
so, as he felt that all there was to be said about himself
could be written in the form of a brief police description.
And he proceeded to write, what is on record, as the
shortest autobiography ever written.
Description: Pitiable half-creature, who should have been
stifled by the doctor when he made his entry yelling
into the world.
Merits: Keeps his nails clean and is never a burden to
anybody.
Faults: Lacks family, cheerful nature, healthy stomach.
Greatest and only petition: Not to be buried alive.
OPPENHEIMER, J. ROBERT
This American physicist is best known as the man be-
hind the development of the atomic bomb during the
Second World War. The son of a prosperous textile im-
porter, Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard and then
spent the next two years at Ernest Rutherford's labora-
tory in Cambridge, England and with Max Born in
Gottingen, Germany, returning to the United States in
1929. The years between 1943 to 1945 were devoted to
war work, at Los Alamos in New Mexico, with the work
culminating in the famous atomic test at Alamogordo.
He received the Medal of Merit from President Truman
in 1946 and thereafter served in many advisory capaci-
ties. In 1947, he accepted the directorship of the Institute
of Advanced Study in Princeton, a post he held until his
death.
Oppenheimer is also remembered for creating a school
of theoretical physics at Berkeley, which played a pivotal
role in leading to growth of physics in the United States.
Although he was no longer active in research during his
years at Princeton Oppenheimer encouraged, inspired
and guided his young colleagues. He also wrote exten-

sively about the problems of the atomic age and the re-
lationship between science and culture.
Robert Oppenheimer had to take piano lessons for a
imber of years during his childhood, until the day when
vas in bed with 'flu. When his mother asked him
9 felt, he replied, "Like I do when I have to take
.sons." That reply abruptly ended the piano les-
sons.
When Robert Oppenheimer was a professor at Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, Enrico Fermi was a dis-
tinguished guest of honour at the 1940 Hitekoch lectures.
Oppenheimer was used to presenting physics in extremely
abstract terms, unlike Fermi. After attending a lecture on
the subject of beta decay, Fermi said ruefully to physicist
Emilio Sergle, "I am getting rusty and old. I cannot fol-
low the highbrow theories developed by Oppenheimer's
pupils any more. I went to their seminar and was de-
pressed by my inability to understand them. Only the
last sentence cheered me up. It was: '...And this is Fermi's
theory of beta decay'."
Robert Oppenheimer once took Melba Phillips, a
research assistant, for a car ride on Berkeley hill. He parked
his car at a scenic place, made Ms Phillips comfortable
by wrapping a blanket around her, and announced that
he would be gone for a short walk. Time passed. Police-
man Albert Nevin went by. "My escort went for a walk
hours ago and he hasn't returned," wailed a distraught
Ms Phillips.
A search of the neighbourhood proved fruitless. Then
acting on a hunch, the policeman went to the Faculty
Club, and fo?ind the professor in bed, asleep. "Melba!"
he exclaimed on seeing the policeman. "Oh, my word, I
forgot all about her. I just walked and walked and I was
home and f went to bed!"
Professor Koenig remembered Oppenheimer as
"bright and sensitive, but very much in conflict with
ANECDOTES FRCiM THE LIVES OF SCIENTISTS 165
himself—the conflict between thought and action." Koenig

also said, "For some reason when I think of Oppenheimer,
a quote from Goethe comes to mind: 'Thought widens
but paralyses; action enlivens but narrows'."
Oppenheimer loved to narrate stories about himself.
One of his favourite anecdotes was a conversation in
which he and Paul Dirac figured when they were both at
Gottingen. Dirac took Robert aside one evening and said,
"I don't understand you. In science we try to say things
no one has ever said before, in a way that everybody can
understand. But in poetry, you say things in such a way
that nobody can understand."
Oppenheimer earned the enemity of important of-
ficers in the Air Force when the Vista Project, of which
he was a member, strongly recommended that tactical
nuclear weapons be deployed only to defend the Allies
in Europe. This went against the Air Force which wanted
massive retaliation. With the coming of the McCarthy
era, these enemies saw an opportunity of destroying
Oppenheimer. A long trial followed in which he was
questioned provocatively about his long-time associations
with communist friends, although these relationships had
been public knowledge even during Oppenheimer's Los
Alamos days. Oppenheimer was found guilty and the
security denied him clearance. In 1963, President Kennedy
moved to redress the injustice by choosing Oppenheimer
for the Fermi award. It was given to him by President
Johnson in December 1963, but security clearance was
never restored.
When at Berkeley, Oppenheimer met the Sanskrit
scholar Arthur Ryder. The two soon became good friends
and Ryder taught Oppenheimer to read Sanskrit. It did
not takp him long to master Sanskrit well enough to read
the Bhagwad Gita. Of the Gita, Oppenheimer said, "It is
the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known
tongue."
Once while showing his new car to a friend,
1 6 6 XV111 OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Oppenheimer remarked, "The car's name is Garuda—

the vehicle (vaahan) of Maha Vishnu."
After the first atomic test, when the blue-violet of
the sinister colour vanished, leaving behind an outline of
grey smoke splashed with the yellow morning sun,
Oppenheimer was to remember a line from his favourite
Gita, 'I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds'.
PASTEUR, LOUIS
Chemist (1822-1895)
The French chemist and founder of the science of micro-
biology made one of the greatest contributions to medi-
cine by his discovery that most familiar diseases are caused
by germs.
Pasteur received his education at the Ecole Normale
Superieure in Paris and served first as professor of phys-
ics at Dijon, and then as professor of chemistry at
Strasbourg. After that he returned to Ecole Normale as
Director of Scientific Studies. In 1888, he became the first
Director of the newly established Pasteur Institute. His
first discoveries were in crystallography. Pasteur first
presented his germ theory in 1857, in which he claimed
that just as in fermentation, diseases were caused by

microbes. He then went on to show that in reality each
microbe is derived from a similarly pre-existing microbe
and that spontaneous generation does not occur, unlike
what was earlier believed. He demonstrated that spoil-
age of perishable products could be prevented by de-
stroying the microbes already present in the products
and by protecting the material against further contami-
nation.
In 1865, Pasteur was asked to study diseases of silk-
worms that threatened the silk industry, and after three
years of laborious work, he found that there were two
distinct diseases in silkworms, and showed how they
could be prevented.
In 1877, he demonstrated that anthrax was caused
by a particular bacillus that can survive in the carcasses
of dead animals. He v/ent on to found the science of
immunity by demonstrating that smallpox could be pre-
vented by injecting cowpox material, thus beginning a
new era of vaccination.
Finally in 1882, he showed that rabies was caused
by a virus and was able to cure humans who had been
bitten by rabid dogs.
Pasteur was the son of a poor tanner. It was with
great financial difficulty that he went on to study for his
doctorate in chemistry. He had to ration his food and
firewood to the barest level possible, and frequently suf-
fered from hunger pangs. In his later years, when he was
asked how he could have gone on like that, Pasteur re-
plied, "Fortunately I was also subject to frequent head-
aches, so one pain tended to cancel out the other."
Pasteur's persistence in love was no less than his
persistence in his studies. After having been turned down
by the girl he loved, he wrote to the young girl's mother,
"I am afraid that Mademoiselle Marie attaches too much
importance to first impressions, which can only be
unfavourable to me. There is nothing in me to attract a
young girl. But memory tells me that when people have

known me well, they have liked me."
It was Pasteur's wedding day. His bride and her
family were chewing off their fingernails in panic when
he did not show up. The pastor shouted, "Where on
earth is that young chemist?"
Where could he be except in his laboiatory, thought
a friend of Pasteur as he hurried to the lab to see if he
was there. The unruffled groom was plunged deep in
one of his experiments. "Did you forget your wedding?"
asked the friend.
"Oh, no!" replied Pasteur. "But do you expect me to
quit in the middle of an experiment?" was Pasteur's re-
joinder.
When Pasteur was investigating the silkworm epi-
demic on request by the government, three of his chil-
dren died in succession. "To go on persistently with your
work under such conditions," remarked a friend, "must
require a lot of courage."
"I don't know much about courage," replied Pasteur.
"But, I do know my duty."
Once while the Academy of Medicine was discuss-
ing Pasteur's principle of immunisation, tempers ran so
high that Pasteur called one of his critics 'stupid'. Jules
Guerin rushed at him violently, but there was an inter-
vention and the meeting was declared closed. Dr Guerin,
in the tradition of the day, challenged Pasteur to a duel.
Unruffled, Pasteur reminded him, "Doctor, you know,
my business is to heal, not kill."
The most dramatic episode in Pasteur's life came
during his famous battle against hydrophobia. His ex-
periments used to consist of inoculating the saliva of
mad dogs into healthy rabbits, by allowing them to be
bitten by the dogs. On one occasion, a large, ferocious
bulldog refused to comply. Pasteur concluded that it would
be necessary to suck the saliva out of the dog's mouth
and then inject it into the rabbit. His assistants tied the
dog securely, arid Pasteur, with a glass tube in his mouth,

bent close to the jaws of the animal. Very calmly and
fully aware that even a tiny drop of the deadly liquid
was enough to kill him, he sucked into the tube. When
he thought he had pulled out a sufficient amount, he
turned to his assistants and said in a cool voice, "Well
gentlemen, we can now proceed with the experiment!"
Pasteur had been elected by the French government
to represent the country at the International Medical
Congress in London. He entered St. James Hall amidst
tumultous applause. Pasteur was, however, blissfully
unaware that he was the cause of the ovation. He turned
to his escort and said a little hesitatingly, "It must be the
Prince of Wales arriving. I'm sorry I didn't come earlier."
Pasteur worked with incredible intensity even after
a stroke had partly paralysed him at the age of forty-
seven. He continued his research until his health com-
pletely broke down. He was, he confessed, guided by a
conviction that there were spiritual values that transcended
science, that gave meaning to his work.
PAULI, WOLFGANG
Pauli was the Austrian physicist, who was awarded the
1945 Nobel Prize for physics for his ground-breaking work
in quantum physics that culminated in his formulation
of the famous 'exclusion principle'. Pauli studied at the
University of Munich under the renowned Arnold
Sommerfield, where he produced a brilliant 250-page essay
on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. After Munich, Pauli
worked for a while with Neils Bohr in Copenhagen on
possible improvements on the prevailing Bohr-Sommerfield
structure of the atom. In 1924, Pauli proposed that in
addition to the three parameters that specified an electron's
orbit, there existed one more, which he termed the 'spin'
of the electron. In the following year, he proposed the
exclusion principle, which proved indispensable to the

development of the quantum theory as well as nuclear
and particle physics.
Equally important was Pauli's prediction of a new
chargeless particle of negligible mass, which he called
the 'neutrino'. This particle was experimentally detected
in 1956. After the war, Pauli's interests turned more
philosophical and he collaborated with Carl Jung in the
investigation of the parallels between analytical psychol-
ogy and quantum physics.
Eugene Wigner, the physicist, once reminiscing about
Pauli, said, "Pauli was a brilliant lecturer if he prepared
his address. Once when I invited him to address our
colloquium in Princeton, he was clearly unprepared. The
audience began to get restless, and feeling somewhat
responsible for the event, I wanted to help out. He had
not defined the mathematical symbols he was using and
I thought that if he explained them, it would help us
understand what he was trying to say. 'Pauli,' I said,
'could you tell us again what your small 'a' stands for?'
The 'again' was sheer politeness, for Pauli had never
defined it. Pauli was completely flabbergasted by my
question and just stood there, speechless for a few sec-
onds. When he had recovered, he said, 'Wigner, you just

have to know everything.' Needless to say, the audience
did not find that very amusing."
Pauli could be ruthless in his scientific criticism, for
he had a profound insight into physics, and his intuition
was quick to spot false trails, shaky arguments and er-
rors of assumption. For this reason, the young Pauli was
nicknamed die geissel Gottes (the whip of God) and der
furchterlichi Pauli (frightful Pauli). Even Einstein and
Heisenberg were not immune from his critical attacks.
In Heisenberg's words, "I spotted a dark-haired stu-
dent (at the University of Munich) with a somewhat
secretive face in the third row. Sommerfield had intro-
duced us during my first visit and had then told me that
he considered the boy to be one of his most talented
students, one from whom I could learn a great deal. His
name was Wolfgang Pauli and for the rest of his life, he
was to be a good friend, though often a very severe critic."
And Einstein, after reading Pauli's essay on the Theory
of Relativity, wrote: "No one studying this mature, grandly
conceived work could believe that the author is a man of
twenty-one. One wonders what to admire most—the
psychological understanding for the development of ideas,
the sureness of mathematical deduction, the profound
physical insight, the capacity for lucid systematic pre-
sentation, the complete treatment of the subject matter,
or the sureness of critical appraisal."
Despite his breathtaking work in quantum physics
and the incredible level of sophistication of his scientific
thinking, Pauli's own life had begun falling into greater
and greater disorder. His lectures at the University of
Zurich, where he had been appointed a year earlier, in
1928, were becoming confusing and ill-prepared. In ad-
dition, his critical tongue was becoming uncontrollably
sarcastic. His mother had poisoned herself, and Pauli's
recent marriage to a cabaret singer, broke up violently in
a few weeks. Pauli was also drinking heavily and was,
on several occasions, thrown out of bars for physical assault.

Precariously close to a complete breakdown, Pauli sought
the professional help of Carl Jung, who had this very
interesting thing to say about Pauli: "...A university man,
a very one-sided intellectual. His unconscious mind had
become troubled and activated, so it projected itself on to
other men who appeared to be his enemies, and he felt
terribly lonely, because everyone seemed to be against
him...he made a fool of himself with women and, of course,
they had no patience with him..."
Apart from the 'exclusion principle', Pauli had be-
come notoriously famous for the 'Pauli effect'—a phe-
nomenon that has gone down in the mythology of sci-
ence. The effect concerned Pauli's allergy to laboratory
apparatus, or maybe, the other way around—the allergy
that lab equipment 'felt' when Pauli was around! It was
said that Pauli had only to walk into a laboratory for
something to either explode or fracture!
Glasswares would break, needles/apparatus fall,
electric wires start sparkling. Such humorous accidents,
however, were not taken lightly by a principal of his
university, who prevented Pauli from entering his labo-
ratory whenever Pauli visited his university as a distin-
guished guest.
Many examples of the 'Pauli effect' are still recounted
by physicists. Professor J. Franck had a particularly cu-
rious one that he frequently referred to. On one occasion,
a complicated piece of machinery collapsed in the Gottingen
laboratory. Franck wrote to Pauli pointing out that, since
the theoretician was living in Zurich, the Pauli effect could
hardly be to blame in this case. Pauli, however, replied
that he wasn't in Zurich at that time; he was in a train
travelling to Copenhagen and the train had stopped at
Gottingen station exactly at the time of the mishap!
Pauli and Jung, who began their association in a
very different way, went on to become good friends and
collaborators. They presented their insights into what they
believed was a new principle of nature that would comple-

ment the approach of physics. They were both convinced
of a greater symmetry that must exist, one in which events
obey the greater principle of synchronicity. In one of his
letters to Heisenberg, Pauli wrote: "Division and reduc-
tion of symmetry, this then is the kernel of the brute!
The former is an ancient attribute of the devil...If only
the two divine contenders—Christ and the devil—could
notice that they have grown so much more symmetri-
cal.
When Pauli died in 1958, Jung wrote of him: "It is
most unfortunate that Pauli died so early, as he was a
physicist who had the ear of his time, more so than a
psychologist like myself..."
PAVLOV, IVAN PETROVICH

Physiologist (1849-1936)
This Russian physiologist Won the 1904 Nobel Prize for
his pioneering research on digestive glands and his work
provided psychology with a more objective methodol-
ogy and led to new methods of treating mental illness.
Following his research on digestion in laboratory
animals, Pavlov provided a foundation for modern gas-

troenterology. He was able to explain the role of enzymes
in digestion, and discovered the enzyme enterokinase.
He also subsequently developed a theory of digestion
that was of great value in the clinical pathology of the
stomach and intestines. In 1901, Pavlov demonstrated
his theory of 'conditioned reflex', in the famous experi-
ment with dogs. In the 1920s, Pavlov extended his theory
of animal behaviour to human psychology and the treat-
ment of mental illness. His work provided psychology
with a great boost, and laid the foundation for the
behaviourist school of psychology which dominated
Western psychological thinking until very recently.
Pavlov was an extraordinary researcher who invented
entirely new techniques in his work in medicine and
physiology. For example, in his study of digestion in
animals, he had to devise a technique by which he could
observe and study digestive processes over a long pe-
riod of time. For this, he devised the incredible 'window
in the stomach' technique, in which a permanent open-
ing is made in the animal's abdominal wall to allow
continuous observation of internal processes. In one case,
he was actually able to observe digestive processes for as
long as fourteen years!
Insufficient humidity once resulted in the loss of all
of Pavlov's insects which were to be used in a series of
experiments. When his wife chided him for failing to
obtain a professorship that would have improved their
otherwise modest financial situation, Pavlov retorted,
"Leave me alone. A real tragedy has occurred. All my
butterflies are dead, and you worry over a silly trifle!"
PLANCK, MAX
Physicist (-1858-1947)
Planck was one of the greatest physicists from Germany
whose research in thermodynamics and radiation led to
his, discovery of the fundamental constant 'h', or the

'Planck's constant'. His quantum theory, which he an-
nounced in 1900, revolutionised the understanding of the
subatomic world. Planck studied at the University of Berlin,
under the legendary physicists Hermann von Helmholtz
and Gustav Kirchhoff. After completing his Ph.D. on the
second law of thermodynamics, he started teaching at
Keil University, and subsequently became a successor to
Kirchhoff at Berlin University. Planck's great contribu-
tion to physics was his formulation that energy exists in
the form of packets called quanta, which laid much of the
foundation for the science of quantum physics.
In late 19th century, there was a growing conviction
among many that physics as a science had become com-
plete, and that it required no further research. One such
person was Planck's high school-teacher, who kept in-
sisting every time he had the opportunity, to remind
Planck, "Everything has already been done in physics.
Better take up something else." Fortunately for science,
Planck ignored his teacher's advice, and went on to ob-
tain his doctorate at the age of twenty-one!
In spite of being one of the greatest physicists living
in Germany at the time, Planck's later years were any-
thing but happy. Unlike many of his counterparts who
either supported Hitler in one way or the other, or ig-
nored the growing Nazism, Planck openly resisted Hitler
with firm courage and conviction. For this he and his
family went through a great deal of anguish. The most
cruel blow was when Planck's son Erwin was executed
in 1945, on the accusation that he was plotting against
Hitler. Planck never quite recovered from this tragedy
and died a broken man, two years after the war ended,
on 4 October 1947.
POINCARE, HENRI
Poincare was the French mathematician and philosopher
of science, who is regarded as the greatest mathemati-

cian of his time. He graduated from the Ecole Polytech-
nique, standing first in his class. In 1879, he received a
degree in mining engineering and a doctorate in math-
ematical sciences from the University of Paris. Poincare's
work ranged over practically all the fields of pure and
applied mathematics. He wrote more than 500 papers on
new aspects of mathematics and more than thirty books
on mathematical and theoretical physics and theoretical
astronomy. His most famous popular work is his famous
essay on the genesis of mathematical creation, which was
published in 1908.
Such was Poincare's reputation as a genius that his
mathematics professor at the university had nicknamed
him 'monster of mathematics'. He had the distinction,
according to what his contemporaries said of him, of
knowing everything that there was to know of math-
ematics at the time. He was also an equally successful
teacher, and he taught physical mechanics, mathematical
physics, calculus of probabilities, celestial mechanics and
philosophy of science.
Poincare always believed that science was essentially
a study of aesthetics. He once said, "The scientist does
not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies
it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure
in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful,
it would not be worth knowing and life would not be
worth living."
PORTER, JOHN ROGER

Microbiologist (1919- )
British microbiologist John Roger Porter had his book on
microbial physiology published at the same time that his
first child was born. A family friend, who heard of the
latter event but had no idea whatsoever about the book,
hastened to congratulate him and was astounded when
Porter, who was full of the book he had just got pub-
lished, replied excitedly, "Thanks a lot. But I couldn't
have done it without two of my graduate students!"
RAMAN, SIR CHANDRASEKHARA VENKATA

The Indian physicist, who was awarded in 1930 the Nobel
Prize in physics for his work on the scattering of light,
subsequently became popular as the man who discov-
ered the 'Raman effect'. He also contributed to the phys-
ics of music and studied colour perception.
Raman graduated from the University of Madras
and then chose to work for the Indian Department of
Finance. At the same time his results of independent
research on sounds made by various musical instruments
were published. He accepted the chair of physics at the
University of Calcutta in 1917, which is where he started
his study of the scattering of light. He reported the re-
sults of his experiments, carried out with his associate
K.S. Krishnan in 1928, for which he was given the Nobel
Prize, just two years later. In 1933, Raman became Direc-
tor of the Indian Institute of Science and stayed there for
the next fifteen years, before taking charge of the newly-

founded Raman Research Institute, where he investigated
crystal structure and colour perception.
Sir-C.V. Raman used to make notes and remarks in
every text-book he read, all his life. He had only three
remarks to make: 'excellent', 'elementary' or 'silly'. He
once remarked, "I feel very strongly about text-books. I
think the only crime worse than reading one is to write
...,,
one.
When he graduated, Raman's teachers urged him to
go to England for further studies. But he was disquali-
fied by the civil surgeon at Madras, who felt that Raman
might not be able to withstand the rigours of the cold
English climate. Years later, Raman is known to have
said, "I shall be ever grateful to this man."
Raman was offered the Palit chair of physics by the
then Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. However,
India being a British colony at the time, one of the re-
quirements for the appointment was training abroad. When
Raman heard of this, he refused to go to England to be
'trained'. Faced with this, the Vice-Chancellor had no
choice but to change the provisions for the endowment.
Finally under pressure from Sir Asutosh, the then Vice-
Chancellor, Raman did go abroad, but not to be trained.
He went as a delegate to the Universities Congress at
Oxford, and came into contact with some outstanding
English scientists, notably J J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford
•and William Bragg. Raman loved to narrate the story of
how moved he was when Rutherford recognised him
sitting on a back bench at one of the lectures and invited
him to come and sit next to him.
Few people know that the famous 'Raman effect'
was arrived at with equipment worth Rs 200, and with
extremely meagre facilities! "The essence of science," he
once said, "is independent thinking and hard work, not
equipment."
Raman was deeply interested in acoustics and did a
painstaking study of the harmonics of musical instru-

ments. This got someone to quip that Raman was at-
tempting to become a fellow of the Royal Society by fid-
dling around in physics!
Raman was known to be witty and would often
intersperse his public lectures with jokes. On receiving a
verbal intimation of the award that the Nobel Prize was
to bring, he queried, "Am I alone or have I a bedfellow
to share?" On another occasion, while he was in Europe,
at a party, Raman the life-long teetotaller was offered a
drink which he wittily declined with the remark, "You
can see the Raman effect on alcohol, but not the effect of
alcohol on Raman."
The state of Indian science and the bureaucratic tangles
of independent India frustrated him endlessly. Upset with
the hypocrisy of the new politicians, he once said, "These
days all that you need for success in India is a Gandhi
cap over your head and nothing under it."
Shortly before his death, he commented, "My life
has been an utter failure. I thought I could try and build
true science in this country, but all we have is a legion
of camp-followers of the West."
RAMANUJAN, SRINIVASA
This Indian mathematical genius got belated recognition
as one of the greatest mathematicians ever. Had his life
not been tragically cut short, Ramanujan's work would
have undoubtedly been recognised within his lifetime as
the work of a genius.
Born in a poor family in south India, Ramanujan
received a scholarship to attend Government College in
1904, but his singular obsession with mathematics at the
expense of other subjects, resulted in his being failed.
However, he continued his mathematical investigation
on his own and fortunately secured a job and started
publishing papers in the journal of the Indian Mathematical

Society. In 1914, he was able to go to Trinity College,
London. While at Cambridge, he published many papers
on a variety of such topics as modular equations and
approximations to pi; high composite numbers; definite
integrals; and modular, elliptic, and hypergeometric func-
tions. In 1918, Ramanujan was made a fellow of the Royal
Society and of Trinity College. Due to bad health, he
returned to India in 1919, where he continued his math-
ematical investigations.
A mathematics teacher, teaching in the eighth grade
in a small school, was telling the class that any number
when divided by the same number becomes unity. He
was then left speechless when a thin, dark-eyed boy called
Srinivasa suddenly interrupted and with a spark in his
eye, asked, "Sir, is that true of zero, too?"
Though he failed his college examination, Ramanujan's
facility in the theory of numbers was in a large measure
intuitive. Many of the results apparently came to his mind
without any effort. On one occasion, Mahalanobis went
to Ramanujan's room to have lunch with him. Ramanujan
was preparing something in a pan on the fire for their
lunch. Mahalanobis went and sat near a table to glance
through the pages of the Strand magazine which, at that

time, used to publish a number of puzzles to be solved
by its readers. He suddenly got interested in a problem
involving a relation between two numbers. Two British
officers were billeted in Paris in two different houses on
a long street, the number of these houses were related in
a special way and the problem was to find out the two
numbers. It was not a difficult problem and Mahalanobis
got the solution in a few minutes by trial and error. He
then jocularly told Ramanujan, "Now here is a problem
for you."
Ramanujan said, "What problem, tell me," and went
on preparing the food.
Mahalanobis read out the problem from the maga-
zine and Ramanujan promptly answered, "Please take
down the solutions," and dictated a continued fraction,
the first term of which was the solution obtained by
Mahalanobis and each successive term represented suc-
cessive solutions for the same type of relation between
the two numbers, just as the number of houses on the
street would increase indefinitely. Mahalanobis was vis-
ibly amazed at Ramanujan's genius as a mathematician.
While conducting his mathematical searches,
Ramanujan continued in his search for a job. After much
effort and amidst growing poverty, Ramanujan finally
found a job at the Madras Port Trust, where, in his spare
time, he absorbed himself in mathematics and started
publishing papers. He then started corresponding with
the great British mathematician Godfrey Hardy of Cam-
bridge University, who was impressed enough with
Ramanujan's work to recognise his genius. He persuaded
Ramanujan to enter Trinity College. What the two math-
ematicians—one, a British agnostic and a superb math-
ematician and the other, a simple Indian with mathematical
powers that seemed to go beyond mere intellect—did
together, is history.
When Ramanujan was in the process of looking for
a job, he had the overwhelmingly difficult task of finding

some money for bread as well as paper for his calcula-
tions. He needed something like seventy large sheets of
paper a day. When things became too difficult, he even
started using scraps of paper that he found in public
waste-bins and lying on the streets. Sometimes he even
used a red pen to write over what had been written in
blue ink on the piece of paper he picked up. And he
would march into offices, showing them his frayed note-
books and sheafs of paper, trying to convince them that
he could at least do a clerical job, but tragically no one
ever understood what he was referring to in his note-
books.
Ramanujan spent his last days bedridden and sick.
But the great mathematical brain was far from being
inactive. When his mentor Hardy came over once to visit
him at his bedside, he said, "I say, Srinivasa, I thought
the number of the taxi I came in was a very dull one. It
was 1729."
Without even a moment's hesitation, Ramanujan
replied, "No, maybe not. It is not a dull number in the
very least. It is the lowest number that can be expressed
in two different ways as the sum of two cubes!"
Ramanujan frequently said that he dreamed of for-
mulae, which he wrote down after waking up and then
attempted to prove!
RAMON Y CAJAL SANTIAGO

Neuroanatomist (1852-1934)
Spanish neuroanatomist and neurohistologist, who shared
the 1906 Nobel Prize for medicine with Camillo Calgi,
for adopting and improving the silver-stain method for
staining nerve tissue. Ramon Cajal received his Licenti-
ate degree (roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.) from the
University of Sargossa in 1873 and a doctorate in medi-
cine in 1877. He then taught anatomy and medicine at
Barcelona and later at Madrid. With his improvement on

Calgi's work, he laid the foundation of present-day knowl-
edge of the structure of the nervous system. The explo-
ration of the structure of the cerebrum was possible only
with Ramon Cajal's silver-stain method. Using this tech-
nique, he went on to demonstrate, for the first time, the
true relationship of nerve fibres with nerve cells. He
established complete knowledge of the structure of the
neuron (the word for a nerve cell) and the interconnec-
tion between neurons.
As a student, Ramon was erratic and rebellious, fre-
quently playing truant and keeping company that his
father, a country-barber, thoroughly disapproved of.
Determined to discipline him and change his ways, his
father apprenticed him to first, a barber and later, a cob-
bler. The hard and humble work paid off and Ramon
went on to earn distinction as a doctor and a scientist!
RAMMELSBERG, CARL FRIEDRICH

Chemist (1813-1899)
This German chemist did pioneering work in physical
chemistry at a time when other chemists had more or
less seen the subject as fully developed. Rammelsberg is
also renowned for his mastery of the chemical balance.
Rammelsberg spent the early years of his life in genteel
poverty. But with characteristic energy, he started a pri-
vate laboratory of his own in which all his early pupils
must have obtained their experience. It was so small that
only two students could be accommodated at a time, and
when one pair went off, a second pair came in. The fee
was ridiculously small, but with his meagre earnings, he
managed to assist his mother to support herself.
Dr Liebert's recollections of Rammelsberg—the vi-
sion of a little man with his head thrust half into the
balance case, rapidly changing weights with a quick,
nervous action. He was never without a cigar in his mouth
and always encouraged his students to smoke in the

laboratory!
Towards the end of his life, he was troubled by fre-
quent, blinding headaches, but he was never idle. Lying
on a couch in the library, he would call his wife from the
next room and dictate the thoughts that entered his mind.
His power of concentration enabled him to work undis-
turbed and the noisy presence of grandchildren was no
hindrance at all.
RAMSAY, SIR WILLIAM

Chemist (1812-1916)
Ramsay was a Scottish chemist. He won the 1904 Nobel
Prize in chemistry for his discovery and isolation of the
inert gases of the atmosphere and placing them in the
chemical periodic table. Ramsay received a doctorate from
the University of Tubingen in 1872, and was appointed
professor of chemistry at University College, London,
where he remained till his retirement in 1912. Ramsay's
early scientific work was with alkaloids and later, with
the properties of liquids. Ramsay discovered the tiny
presence of an unknown gas in the process of separating
nitrogen and oxygen from air. With Lord Rayleigh, who

had begun the study of nitrogen, he announced the dis-
covery and named the gas 'argon', which had been pre-
dicted in 1785 by Cavendish. Ramsay went on to dis-
cover three more previously unknown gases—neon, kryp-
ton and xenon—which formed a new group of 'rare gases'
in the periodic table. In 1903, Ramsay and Soddy showed
that heavy atoms can disintegrate into lighter ones and
with Whytlaw Gray, in 1910, showed that a radium atom
decayed into a radon atom by expelling a helium atom.
William Ramsay's other area of excellence was sports.
It was said that had he not become a scientist, he would
have gone on to become a great swimmer. "When we
were in Paris," recalled a friend of Ramsay's once, "the
four of us used to go for a bath in the Seine every fore-
noon. After the first time, when Ramsay was ready to
dive from the high board, the bathman would pass the
word around that the Englishman was about to take his
dive. Everyone in the establishment, including the
washerwoman outside, would then crowd around and
take up position to watch him."
Sir Ramsay had a rare sense of humour that he used
occasionally in his talks and writings. Once, writing of a
certain trip he had been on, he said, "I went to Paris with
three spirits more wicked than myself." Then he added,
"Three lawyers. Three lawyers and a chemist; just like
nitric acid, liable to explode at any moment."
RAY, PRAFULLA CHANDRA

Chemist (1855-1944)
This prominent Indian chemist was the most importaat
member of a group of outstanding scientists in Calcutta,
in the first two decades of this century. He was one
of the forerunners of a movement to integrate ancient
Hindu wisdom with Christianity and modern science.
He is best remembered for his work, The History of Hindu
Chemistry, which was published in 1902.

From the small town of Jessore, Prafulla Ray moved
to Calcutta with his family in 1870. His dream was to
study at Presidency College, but his father who just about
managed to make ends meet, could not afford the high
fees and Roy instead went to Pandit Iswarchandra
Vidyasagar's Institute. The dream of being in Presidency
College, however, remained. He then went on to earn a
scholarship for Edinburgh and on returning to India, was
appointed lecturer at Presidency College in 1881. Even-
tually he became the head of the chemistry department.
While studying at Edinburgh for his graduation, Lord
Rector announced a prize for the best essay on 'India
before and after the Mutiny'. Ray submitted his piece
after having done extensive research on the subject. Al-
though the prize went to a British student, his essay
found its way into a newspaper that referred to it as
"extensive information that will not be found elsewhere."
Sir P.C. Ray was once invited to Lahore (now in
Pakistan), to deliver a course of lectures on 'Hindu Chem-
istry', a subject which he had made his own. He had
already published, through elaborate research, two large
volumes on the subject. While he was addressing the
vast audience, he noticed a young Englishman in the
front row, who was obviously not happy with what was
being said. Ray was talking about the great experimental
skills of the ancient Indians, who had nothing but very
primitive apparatus and yet carried out processes of
chemical distillation in very crude earthen pots. While he
was exhibiting this with the aid of diagrams, the En-
glishman could hardly suppress his sneers, making it
very obvious what he thought of the whole thing. The
old man kept noticing it, but carried on. He finished
talking about the apparatus and then took in his hand a
lump of makaradhwaja, which is re-sublimed mercuric
sulphide, still prepared according to traditional Indian
methods. In fact, Sir Purdy Lukis, the then Surgeon-General
of Bengal would often prescribe it to his patients as a

stimulant. Sir P.C. Ray took the lump in his hands and
said, "Look here,my friends, with such crude apparatus,
the Indians, two thousands years ago, used to prepare
such a fine chemical and used it to alleviate human suf-
fering," after which he paused and looked at the young
Englishman, and continued, "and this at a time when the
ancestors of our friend there were eating raw berries and
wearing raw hides!"
Sir P.C. Ray was once interviewing a young man who
had been a lawyer for a few years, and now wanted to
enrol himself for graduation in chemistry. Ray's first ques-
tion was why he had left the court, to which he got a ready
reply, "Sir, if I can have the M.A. degree, then I shall have
the letters M.A.,B.L. suffixed to my name and my claims to
a good clerical job will be stronger thereby."
Hearing this nonchalant reply, Ray lamented, "Oh,
chemistry! To what purpose are you being diverted."
Sir P.C: Ray was at one time working on the phos-
phate of soda and superphosphate of lime, both of which
had to be imported from abroad. Undeterred by the scant
funds at his disposal, which made it impossible to im-
port them, he decided to make them from cattle bones.
He then proceeded to procure several bags of raw bones
from the butcher and laid them out to dry atop the ter-
race of his house. Being the month of January, Ray ex-
pected fine weather and lots of sunshine. But as luck
would have it, it began to pour soon after and rained
incessantly for a fortnight! This resulted in the rotting of
the flesh that was still attached to the bones, bringing
maggots and swarms of worms, flights of crows began
to invade the terrace, scattering bits and pieces of the
delicacies among the congested dwellings of his ortho-
dox Hindu neighbours. Ray was implored to remove the
nuisance and was told in no uncertain terms that the
Corporation's health officer would be summoned if he
failed to do so. Fortunately for him, a nitric acid distiller,
whose acquaintance Ray had made, came to his rescue.

With his help, Ray carried away all the bones far away
to a plot of land that had been rented by the distiller. The
bones were then piled up and set ablaze at midnight.
Suspecting foul play and thinking that a corpse was being
disposed off, the local constabulary ran to the spot and
apprehended the two men. To prove his innocence, Ray
thrust a long pole into the bonfire and brought out clus-
ters of loose bones. The policemen were finally convinced
of the bonafide of the transaction and went their way!
Ray started preparing his own drugs, some of them
were ayurvedic, and started exhibiting them at medical
congresses. But many people then were averse to local
products and considered them inferior to what could be
imported from Europe. Indignant at the way Indian prod-
ucts were perceived, he established the Bengal Chemical
& Pharmaceutical Works in 1892 that pioneered pharma-
ceutical research in India.
Ray's attitude to money was such that he gave away
most of what he received, never wanting to keep any for
himself. His lifestyle was so frugal that he only needed
Rs 200 out of the Rs 1000 that he earned, and he gave
away the rest for the propagation of chemistry, establish-
ment of industries, betterment of industrial
workers and for widows and orphans.
One thing about which Ray was uncompromisingly
particular was his last meal of the day, which had to be
at 9:30 p.m. sharp. If he was to take a train that started
at that hour, he would arrange to carry all his food into
the train and eat at the appointed time, rather than eat at
home earlier. If he was visiting somebody's house, and
if the meals were not forthcoming at that time, he would
reach into his little bag and take out a little bread and
sugar which he always kept with him, and then quietly
retire to bed. No amount of persuasion on the part of the
host would make Ray eat afterwards!
Always convinced that science in India needed to
stand on its own feet, Ray would often be critical about

those who went abroad in search of 'better education'. In
his autobiography, he wrote: "Professor Raman is prac-
tically self-taught and all his brilliant researches have
been carried out in the laboratories of Calcutta...Ghosh
and Saha did not care to have a D.Sc. (London) suffixed
to their names for fear they would be lowering the doc-
torate of their own alma mater."
RAYLEIGH, LORD JOHN

The British physicist, who won the 1904 Nobel Prize for
physics for his discovery of the argon gas, along with Sir
Ramsay, received the prize for chemistry. Rayleigh gradu-
ated from Cambridge University in 1865, and set up a
laboratory on his family estate. His early work was in
the field of acoustics and optics, and he did pioneering
work on resonance and an explanation of the blue colour
of the sky as a result of the differing degrees of scatter-
ing of light. In 1879, he left his personal laboratory and
became Cavendish professor of experimental physics at
Cambridge. There he established standards of laboratory
instruction and the redetermination of the electrical units
of the ohm, the ampere and the volt. Rayleigh returned to

his private laboratory in 1884 and continued his research
there.
One day, in September 1913,. the British Association
for the Advancement of Science was discussing the prob-
lem of radiation. In the august gathering were Marie
Curie, Lorentz, Lord Rutherford and Lord Rayleigh. As
the septugenerian Rayleigh was silent throughout the
long discussions, Larmor needled him into getting to say
something. Rayleigh quietly replied, "In my younger days,
I took many views very strongly and one among them
was that a man, who had passed his sixtieth year, ought
not to express himself about modern ideas. Although I
must confess that today I do not take this view quite so
strongly, I keep it strongly enough not to take part in
this discussion!"
ROENTGEN, WILHELM CONRAD

Roentgen was a German physicist to be awarded the first
Nobel Prize for physics in 1901, for his discovery of X-
rays and for ushering in a new era of medicine and modern
physics. Roentgen graduated from the polytechnic in Zurich
and after early work at the universities of Wurzburg and
Strasbourg, became professor of physics at the Univer-
sity of Geissen, in Germany. In 1888, he became profes-
sor and Director of the Physical Institute at the Univer-
sity of Wurzburg.
It was in 1895, when Roentgen was experimenting
with an evacuated glass tube (Crooke's tube) that he made
his momentous discovery of an hitherto unknown radia-
tion. This radiation seemed to pass through paper, wood,
skin and other materials, and Roentgen called it X-ray
radiation. Roentgen also worked on specific heat of gases,
compressibility of liquids and gases and electrical phe-
nomenon in crystals.
Roentgen may have discovered X-ray, but credit for

it ushering in a new era of easy medical diagnosis must
go to his wife. On 22 December 1895, after having waited
long enough for Roentgen to come to supper, Mrs
Roentgen walked into her husband's laboratory, and quite
accidentally, placed her hands on a photographic plate
that Roentgen was using in one of his experiments. And
lo and behold, there was a strange looking 'photograph'
of her hand. The rest is history...
RUTHERFORD, LORD ERNEST

The 1908 Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to this
British physicist for working out the theory of the radio-
active disintegration of elements. Rutherford was born
and educated in New Zealand and pursued his higher
studies at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where
he worked under physicist J.J. Thomson. In 1898,
Rutherford became professor of physics at McGill Uni-
versity in Canada, where he worked with British chemist
Fredrick Soddy, on radioactive disintegration. Rutherford
then distinguished the alpha and beta rays—which he
named—and showed that radioactivity involved natural
transmutation of radioactive elements. Later, he worked,
with his assistants Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, on
scattering of alpha particles by thin gold sheets. It was
through this work that Rutherford demonstrated that an
atom must consist of a small positively charged nucleus
around which electrons circle. This became the basis for
Niels Bohr's work on the atomic structure in 1913. In
1917, Rutherford was able to successfully bombard nitro-
gen with alpha particles, changing the atoms to oxygen
atoms and thus becoming the first person to change one
metal into another. Rutherford was appointed Director
of the Cavendish laboratory in 1919, and raised to the
peerage in 1931.
In 1895, when Cambridge University decided to confer

degrees on graduate students from other universities,
Ernest Rutherford was among the first few on the list.
When his mother hurried into the garden to convey the
good news to him, he was diligently digging potatoes.
On hearing the news, he flung the spade aside and ex-
claimed, "These are the last potatoes I shall dig!"
When Rutherford was Director of Cavendish labora-
tory, he was nicknamed the 'crocodile'. According to Otto
Hahn, there was some story about a crocodile that swal-
lowed something indigestible that went on rumbling in
its belly, so wherever it went, everyone would always
hear it coming. Rutherford was called the crocodile be-
cause of his loud and emphatic way of talking that could
be heard all the way down the corridor!
Rutherford loved to make good-humoured fun of
students and researchers working under him. There was
one student, a Scotsman named Russel, who Rutherford
loved to joke with. He would often say to Russel that all
Scotsmen were 'overscholarshipped' and 'overpraised'.
One day at tea-time, he told Russel, "You, young fellows
come down here from across the border with such testi-
monials written by your Scot professors that, why man
alive, even if Faraday or Clark Maxwell were competing
against you, they wouldn't get on the short list!"
Lord Rutherford was once standing in the drawing-
room at Trinity when a clergyman came in. Rutherford
looked up and announced, "I'm Lord Rutherford."
To which the clergyman replied, "I'm the Archbishop
of York." According to Rutherford, neither of them be-
lieved the other.
A writer once remarked to Rutherford, "You are a
lucky man, always on the crest of a wave!"
Came the laughing retort, "Well, I made the wave,
didn't I?" and then a more sober, "At least to some ex-
tent."
When Rutherford was raised to peerage, a function
was organised to felicitate him. Niels Bohr attended the

function and in a group discussion he referred to
Rutherford as 'Lord Rutherford'. Rutherford was upset
with this address and said to Niels Bohr later, "You lord
me?" Rutherford was evidently upset by this address as
he felt that it came in the way of their close friendship.
The close intimacy between the two scientists was
further revealed when Lady Rutherford, after the death
of her husband, sent to Niels Bohr the cigarette case used
by Lord Rutherford and to which Niels Bohr recipro-
cated by writing: "This will remind me every day of his
fatherly friendship."
SAHA, MEGHNAD
This Indian physicist came from extremely humble be-
ginnings. His father was an impoverished grocer who
wanted nothing more for his fifth child than to start earning
for the family. But on advice of his local primary teach-
ers, he reluctantly allowed the boy to attend a school,
over fourteen kilometres away, with a well-wisher pay-
ing for the tuition fees. The young boy would walk that
distance every day, determined to finish his schooling.

Later he began earning a little money by giving tuitions
to children, cycling to distant places in the morning and
evening to teach physics and mathematics. From these
beginnings, the boy rose to be one of the greatest Indian
scientists.
On numerous occasions Saha was misunderstood,
possibly due to his calling a spade a spade and his intol-
erance of hypocrisy and pretence. A man who prefers
plain-speaking and nothing but the truth seldom wins
popularity. Saha, in this sense, was never the popular
image of a scientist. During his time Saha was often accused
of voicing dissent against the Hindu philosophy and the
wisdom of the Vedas. It is a common enough mistake to
suppose that a man well versed in modern scientific ideas
would be ignorant of the classics or the scriptures. The
fact that Saha was well read in the scriptures prompted
him to declare in no uncertain terms: "The present writer
claims that he has first-hand knowledge of all books (the
Vedic literature)." The supreme confidence of tone and
the aggressive style constituted the insignia of Saha, the
fighter.
What was he fighting against? We have Saha's own
account of it in one of his numerous popular and semi-
scientific articles. After acquiring renown for his work on
thermal ionisation, Saha went to Dacca. A lawyer of Dacca
wanted to know the nature of his scientific work. With
characteristic aplomb, the young Saha told him in great
detail about the composition of stars and his latest find-
ings. The listener, however, seemed unimpressed. Every
other minute he interrupted to comment, "But this is
nothing new, we have all this in the Vedas."
Disgusted, Saha asked him, "Would you be kind
enough to tell me exactly in which part of the Vedas do
we find the theory of ionisation of stars?"
Much to Saha's dismay the undaunted gentleman
replied, "Well, I haven't read the Vedas myself, but it is
my firm conviction that whatever you people claim as a

new scientific discovery is all contained in the Vedas."
Saha spent the next twenty years of his life in study-
ing the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all the
Hindu astronomical texts.
Perhaps Saha could have stayed away from politics
and still be of service to the nation had the events taken
the course he so desired. He felt that the river projects
were not being managed properly and that there was a
general confusion in planning. It was no longer possible
to limit his protests to the fiery editorials of Science &
Culture. The only way to voice his protest and be heard
was from the floor of the Parliament. That was the only
way to inform the public and make the government rec-
tify the mistakes. Saha stood for the first Constituent
Assembly elections and wori>to join politics.
SAHNI, BIRBAL
Palaeobotanist (1891-1949)
In 1932, Birbal Sahni was visited by a foreign scientist
who had come to Lucknow to meet the great palaeobotanist
of India. The foreigner was amazed to find Sahni sitting
in a corner of a small botany museum. "You don't have
a room to yourself!" he exclaimed.
"Great scientists have worked in garrets. I am only
an amateur," was the smiling reply.
SALK, JONAS EDWARD

Epidemiologist (1914- )
This American medical research scientist developed the
first vaccine against poliomyelitis. Salk took his medical
degree from New York University .College of Medicine
in 1939, and in 1947 became head of the University of
Pittsburgh's Virus Research laboratory and taught pre-
ventive medicine. From 1942 to 1947, Salk also worked
for the US Army on the development of a vaccine against

influenza. In 1949, John Enders and his microbiology group
at Harvard found a way of culturing polio virus for study.
By 1952, Salk and his group had prepared and success-
fully tested such a vaccine. In 1963, Salk became Director
of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at San Diego in
California.
The search for a polio vaccine was on and the two
groups that seemed nearest to the final discovery were
Enders' group at Harvard and Salk's group at Pittsburgh.
After Enders had succeeded in culturing the virus, Jonas
Salk began his attempts at combating the virus with a
vaccine in a way that it was incapable of causing disease,
but capable of producing antibodies. He finally succeeded
in preparing such a vaccine, thus creating medical his-
tory. When the reporters came, Salk was sitting in his
laboratory, engrossed in his work. "How did you arrive
at the vaccine?" asked one of the reporters.
"Well," replied Salk with characteristic humility,
"Enders threw a long forward pass and I just happened
to be there to catch it."
Salk was interviewed by Edward R. Murrow who
asked, "Who owns the patent right of the vaccine?"
Salk replied, "It will be the people I would say. There
is no patent. Can you patent the sun?"
His biography written by Jane S. Smith carries the
title Patenting the Sun.
SHALER, NATHANIEL
Geologist (1841-1906)
This well-known American geologist did more than any-
one else in his field to popularise geology as a subject in
the last century. Much has been recorded about Shaler's
ecclectic teaching style and his impact on students at
Harvard, where he taught for most of his life.
Student legend at Harvard has it that Shaler's method
of grading consisted of piling up all the examination

notebooks in a mountainous heap on the sofa. After they
had aged a week, he would plunge both hands deep into
the uncorrected papers and carry all he could hold to a
chair on the opposite side of the room. A second week
would go by and he would carry another armload to
another chair; and on to the third and fourth week until
all books had been transferred from their original resting
place on the sofa. Those in the first chair, he gave A's;
those in the second got B's; the third, C's; the fourth,
D's, and all those that had slipped off onto the floor in
this impartial evaluation system, were considered flunked!
SCHEELE, CARL WILHELM

Chemist (1742-1786)
The Swedish chemist, who discovereed more new chemi-
cal substances in his lifetime than anyone else, was born
in Stralsund, which is now in Germany. He worked as a
pharmacist in Malmo, Stockholm and Uppsala,, and af-
ter 1775, in Koping. Early in his career, he isolated tar-
taric acid, and in his later years, isolated gallic acid, malic
acid, citric acid and oxalic acid.
Among the inorganic compounds, he was the first
to isolate the toxic gases—hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen
fluoride and hydrogen cyanide. Scheele also discovered
the coloured compound, copper arsenite, which came to
be known a Scheele's green. He was also the first to
demonstrate the presence of calcium phosphate in bone.
In his honour, the mineral from which he first obtained
tungstic acid, in 1781, is still called scheelite.
Scheele is probably one of the most unfortunate
scientists ever. He either discovered or greatly contrib-
uted to the discovery of manganese, nitrogen, oxygen,
tungsten, barium, molybdenum and chlorine. But incredibly
enough, in each of these cases, the credit went to some-
one else. In the case of chlorine, for example, he actually
isolated and described it in 1774, but did not give it the

status of a separate element. And so, the credit went to
Humphrey Davy twenty-six years later! Worse still, Scheele
'discovered oxygen as early as 1771, but owing to a grossly
negligent publisher, the description of his experiments
was delayed until it was too late; for Joseph Priestley
published his discovery three years later, and got the
credit for it!
When Gustav III of Sweden was in Paris, a deputa-
tion of French scientists called on him. They congratu-
lated him on the achievement of his fellow-countryman
and subject Scheele, the great discoverer of chemical
substances. The King, who took little interest in the progress
of science, felt somewhat ashamed that he should be so
ignorant as never even to have heard of the renowned
chemist. He dispatched a courier at once with the order,
"Scheele is to be immediately raised to the the dignity of
a Count."
"His Majesty must be obeyed, but who the hell is
Scheele?" said the minister.
And a secretary was sent off to make inquiries. He
returned with the details. "Scheele is a good sort of fel-
low," he said, "a lieutenant in the artillery, a capital shot,
and a first-rate hand at billiards."
The next day the lieutenant was summoned to the
court and made a Count. And the chemist was forgotten
by the King and court!
As one of the greatest chemists of his time, what-
ever chemistry Scheele had learnt was 'hands on'; he
never went to any college or university, but instead be-
came an apprentice in an apothecary in Gotheborg in
Sweden. He remained a pharmacist for the rest of his
life. Before he died at the age of forty-three, in the last
years of his life, Scheele suffered from severe attacks of
rheumatism. He never married until three days before
his death, and that was only so that his wife may inherit
his pharmacy. She happened to be the widow of the former
owner of the pharmacy from whom, Scheele had bought

it twenty years ago!
SCHWEITZER, ALBERT
Scholar (1875-1965)
French-German scholar, humanitarian and spiritualist
Dr Schweitzer became famous in music, theology, phi-
losophy and medicine, and as a charismatic spiritual leader.
Schweitzer received doctorate in philosophy in 1899, with
a thesis on Kant from the University of Strasbourg. He
became one of the great church and concert organists of
his time and he himself designed and built some of the
world's well-known organs. As a religious thinker, he
wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus, in 1906, which became
one of the most widely read books of that time in the
field of theology. In 1905, Schweitzer went to the Congo
as a medical missionary, where he and his wife founded
the Schweitzer Hospital in Lambarene, Gabon. Schweitzer
spent the rest of his life in Africa and died in 1965 at
Lambarene. In recognition of his accomplishments, he
was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.
Schweitzer had a phenomenal influence on people

wherever he went. Wherever Schweitzer's story was
known, people were affected and their lives changed.
For instance, Larimer Mellon, a member of one of the
wealthiest families in the United States, was so deeply
moved by Schweitzer's selfless dedication that he
returned to college in his forties, took a medical degree
and with his wife, founded the Albert Schweitzer Hospi-
tal in Haiti.
As a young student, Albert Schweitzer had resolved
that after he became thirty, he would devote all his
energies to helping people. And so, on his thirtieth birth-
day, to the dismay of his friends and colleagues, he
enrolled for intensive studies at the university's medical
school in order to equip himself for service as a
medical missionary. He was able to pay for the medical
school expenses from the sale and royalty of his book on
Bach, and from whatever he had earned from his con-
certs.
In 1912, he married Helene Bresslau, who had stud-
ied nursing in preparation for the missionary work. In
1913, Schweitzer obtained his medical degree and with
his wife, went to Africa. There they founded their hospi-
tal at the edge of the Ogooue River, where during sub-
sequent decades, many thousands of Africans received
life-saving treatment.
During Schweitzer's visit to America in 1949, a former
school pupil met him at the railway station and took him
to a restaurant for breakfast. A cake that was specially
made for the occasion was produced, giving the table a
festive look. Dr Schweitzer was handed the knife and
asked to cut the cake. He stood up and counted the number
of people. There were nine of them, but he cut the cake
into ten pieces. "One piece for the young lady who has
so graciously served us," he said, handing the tenth piece
to the waitress.
SEMMELWEIS, IGNAZ PHILIPP

This Hungarian physician is credited with being one of
the best medical instructors in Europe. His ideas on
surgery were however considered to be too esoteric for
his time and much of his medical career was spent in
defending himself against charges made by his contem-
poraries.
In 1846, Ignaz Semmelweis was appointed to the
Obstetrics Clinic at a rather prominent hospital in Vienna.
Taking over duties the next day, he ordered his medical
students to wash their hands in chloride of lime, before
attending to the patients. Some of the students went and
reported this unusual request to the Dean, who,not un-
derstanding the importance of cleanliness in medical
practice, was convinced of the mental instability of
Semmelweis. On his orders, Semmelweis was arrested
and confined to the local mental asylum as a patient!
SIEBOLD, VON CARL THEODOR ERNST

Zoologist (1804-1885)
This German zoologist was reputed to be a gifted scien-
tist who sometimes used some unusual techniques to
produce scientific results. He discovered, among other
things, the source of tapeworms in human intestines.
Siebold and his fellow-workers were convinced that
certain bladderworms were responsible for the occurrence
of tapeworms in humans. But before being absolutely
certain and making their results public, a crucial experi-
ment was necessary to establish the hypothesis. Charac-
teristic of the man, Siebold did not see any difficulty
whatsoever in this. Not only did he swallow the
bladderworms, he made his assistants do the same, and
in due time the whole group became infested with tape-
worms, thereby proving the hypothesis!
SIMPSON, SIR JAMES YOUNG

Obstetrician (1811-1870)
This Scotsman, who pioneered the use of chloroform and
first used it as an obstetric device in reducing labour
pains, acquired his reputation due to the antagonism of
the clergy, and his clever attempts to resolve the tangles
he found himself in.
The person on whom Dr James Simpson first used
chloroform was a fellow-physician's wife. The interest-
ing thing was that neither the patient nor her husband
had been informed by Simpson about this. The baby grew
into a charming little toddler and Simpson asked for a
copy of her photograph. He captioned it 'Saint Anaesthesia'
and placed it on his table, where it stayed till the end of
his life.
After it became known that Simpson was using ether
and chloroform in midwifery practice, there was a storm
of protest from the clergy. They held that it was unnatu-
ral and sinful to allay the pain of childbirth since the
Curse of Eve reads, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children."
Refusing to be taken in, Simpson argued that origi-
nal scriptures had been wrongly translated and that the
true meaning of the Hebrew word was 'effort', and not
'sorrow'. His quick-wittedness won the battle for Simpson;
he had not the faintest idea about what was in the scrip-
tures and had made this up on the spur of the moment!
STEINMETZ, CHARLES 'PROTEUS'

Electrical engineer (1865-1923)
This German-American pioneered the development of
modern power systems using alternating current. A stu-
dent of the University of Breslau, he had to flee Ger-
many in 1888 to Zurich and then to the United States,
where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Steinmetz's first important research was on the phe-
nomenon of hysteresis by which power is lost because of

magnetic resistance. This research led him to a study of
alternating current and motors could be made more effi-
cient. Since there was no available theory of alternating
current, Steinmetz set to work on formulating such a
theory and worked on it for the next twenty years. In
1893, Steinmetz joined the newly organised General Elec-
tric Company in Schenectady, serving as consulting en-
gineer until his death in 1923. He wrote a number of
books, including Engineering Mathematics (1910) and America
and the New Epoch (1916).
As a student at the University of Breslau, Steinmetz,
in spite of his handicap of being a hunchback, was ac-
tively involved in student politics and was a committed
socialist. He even began and edited a weekly called The
People's Voice, which soon ran into fianancial trouble. One
day the printer and the paper merchant arrived to de-
mand immediate payment of a long-standing bill. Unfazed
by the seriousness of the demand, Steinmetz led the
gentlemen into the rear office and in a hushed voice said,
"May I offer you a complete file of our back issues? Quite
unobtainable elsewhere."
In 1888, Steinmetz wrote a particularly outspoken
editorial criticising the government in no uncertain terms.
Tipped off that he was soon to be arrested, he rounded
up all his colleagues and took them to a pub and bought
them all a round of beer. After much singing and merry-
making, Steinmetz proposed a final toast: "To my father
whose greatest desire it had been to see me graduate
with honours. To my escape over the Swiss border from
the police who are planning to arrest me as a socialist.
To my senior thesis that might have come to a glorious
end in publication rather than in a hideaway suitcase. To
the world and its irony."
It was dawn when he tiptoed into his father's room.
The older man stirred a little in his sleep and said in a
half-sleepy voice, "I have had such a pleasant dream,
Karl...your future."
"Yes, Father, my future...it was a pleasant dream,
was it not?" It was Karl's last meeting with his father. A
few hours later he left Germany forever and became Charles
Steinmetz.
STEPHENSON, GEORGE
This British inventor was the founder of railways.
Stephenson was born into abject poverty and began his
career as a poor watch-repairer. In 1815, he designed and
produced his version of the miner's safety lamp, while
Davy was still carrying out his experiments. When Davy's
lamp appeared, there was violent controversy as to who
should receive credit for the invention.
Once, pointing to a running train, Stephenson asked
the geologist Beckland, "I say, Beckland, what do you
think makes that train go?"
"Why," replied Beckland, "the hand of the driver of
one of your wonderful locomotives."
"No," replied Stephenson.
"Well, then," said Beckland again, "the steam that
moves the machine?"
"No."
"The fire kindled under the boiler?"
"Wrong again," replied Stephenson and continued.
"It is activated by the sun which shone in that far-off
epoch when the plants were alive that afterwards
changed into the coal that the driver is shovelling with
the stoker."
TESLA, NIKOLA
This Croatian-American inventor did pioneering work
on the radio and invented the alternating current motor
system that made it possible to transmit and distribute
electricity.
Tesla studied at the University of Prague in 1881,
before he began work for the newly founded telephone
company in Budapest. In 1882, he moved to the Conti-
nental Edison Company in Paris. Tesla went to the USA
in 1884, where for nearly a year, he redesigned for Tho-
mas Edison in New York city. He established his own
laboratory in 1887 and began his phenomenal research
career. His first and greatest achievement was his dis-
covery of the rotating magnetic field, which provided the
first practical meai>s of generating large quantities of
electricity and transmitting it over long distances. It be-
came possible to harness the Niagara Falls for electricity
and thus began a new era of street lighting.
Tesla's other great invention was the Tesla coil for
generating high frequency currents, which made pioneer
contributions to the then unborn fields of high frequency
induction heating, diathermy and radio.
Tesla received innumerable honours during his life-
time. In 1956, as part of international commemorations
of his birth centennary, the term Tesla (T) was adopted as
the unit of magnetic flux density.
Tesla, the electrical genius, was without a job upon
arrival in New York city. Pride prevented him from ap-

pealing to his relatives for help. In the street, he saw a
long line of men, and when he asked what it was for, he
got the reply, "Jobs."
"What kind?" asked Tesla.
"They're gonna dig a ditch from here to clear up
into the open country past Forty-Second Street. Gonna
lay some conduit for electrical cables or something. They
advertised for husky men."
"What's the pay?" asked Tesla.
"Two dollars a day/' was the answer.
"I guess I am husky enough." So saying, Tesla stepped
into the line.
Tesla was also a brilliant mathematician, constantly
looking for problems to solve. In a restaurant, he would
not touch his soup until he had first calculated the amount
of liquid in the bowl. One night, the waiter brought him
a bowl of fruit salad. Each piece was of a different size
and shape. Tesla's eyes lit up. Fifteen minutes later, his
pencil was still flying over his pad, covering it with
mathematical symbols. The waiter approached him, "Is
there something wrong with the fruit salad, sir? You haven't
touched it at all."
"Wrong? Of course not," replied Tesla, without look-
ing up. "It couldn't be better."
THALES
Philosopher-scientist (640 B.C.-546 B.C.)
The first known Greek philosopher and scientist Thales

is traditionally regarded as the father of philosophy and
was the first of the seven sages of Greece. He is also
acknowledged as the inventor of theoretical geometry
and abstract astronomy. In mathematics, Thales first
demonstrated that a circle is bisected by its diameter,
that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are
equal, that two intersecting straight lines produce
opposite and equal angles and that the angle of a semi-

circle is a right angle. In astronomy, Thales was the first
to determine the sun's course from solstice to solstice,
and to estimate the size of the sun and the moon in
relation to their cycles. Thales was also the founder Of
the Ionian School of Philosophy, which was chiefly con-
cerned with the physical world and taught that water is
the universal primary substance.
Thales commanded great respect during his lifetime
in Greece, and some even thought that he had learnt
some magical powers when he was studying in Egypt
as a young boy. The reason for the awe about Thales
is understandable—he accurately predicted, a year
before the event, the total eclipse of the sun on 28 May
585 B . C . !
Once on a nocturnal walk in the street, Thales was
so engrossed in contemplating the stars that he fell into
a ditch and badly injured his knee. He was pulled out by
an old woman who rebuked him that he must have been
a liar to have claimed knowledge of heavenly bodies,
when he could not even see what lay at his feet.
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID

This American naturalist, literary artist and member of
the transcendentalist group that flourished in 19th cen-
tury New England, USA was deeply influenced by Ralph
Waldo Emerson's essay, Nature, with whom he devel-
oped a lasting friendship. Born in Concord, and edu-
cated at Harvard, Thoreau taught at school and occasion-
ally helped his father in his business. In 1845, he re-
volted against the government and in jail, wrote his best-
known essay on 'Civil Disobedience'. Thoreau wrote
prolifically although he could never earn a living by writing
as the audience for his kind of writing was especially
limited. He is best remembered for his Walden and A
week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Journal.

Ralph Waldo Emerson remained the- greatest influ-
ence on Thoreau all his life. Once when asked, what had
his college career at Harvard given him, Thoreau replied,
"The discovery of the world of books and Ralph Waldo
Emerson."
From 4 July 1845 to 6 September 1847, Thoreau
carried out his legendary experiment in living at Walden
Pond, in an attempt to find out whether he could
support himself in a minimal way by light manual labour
and thus have most of the time free for writing..When he
left the pond, he had completed the manuscript of A
Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and an
early draft of Walden. Thereafter, he lived at his family's
home in Concord and made a bare living as a handy-
man, so that he could have time for writing and for nature
rambles.
Thoreau was such an enthusiastic naturalist that
Clifton Fadiman used to say of him that he could get
more out of twenty minutes with a chickadoe than most
men would from a night with Cleopatra!
It was the general opinion of most of Concord's citi-
zens that Thoreau was an eccentric. His life was marked
by whimsical acts and unconventional stands on public
issues. When he expressed his deepest convictions through

dramatic; action, he was often misunderstood by many.
His most famous act of defiance was against the Mexican
war and the extension of slavery, by his refusal in 1845
to "pay his taxes. For this he was put into jail, where he
wrote his classic essay 'Resistance to Civil Government',
which was later called 'Civil Disobedience', and which
became an inspiration for the American Civil Disobedi-
ence Movement in the 20th century.
The story goes that when Thoreau was on his death-
bed, a pious aunt who visited him inquired earnestly,
"Henry, have you made your peace with God?"
To which he replied, "I did not know that we had
ever quarrelled!"
TYNDALL, JOHN
This Irish physicist is best known for his work on the
transparency of gases, the absorption by gases and liq-
uids of radiant heat, the qualities of atmospheric light
and the sterilisation of air and liquids. He discovered the
so-called Tyndall effect, in which the blue colour of the
sky is imitated. Tyndall received his Ph.D. at the Univer-
sity of Marburg and later at Berlin. He was appointed
professor of physics at the Royal Institution, London in
1854, where he worked with Michael Faraday. Tyndall
also studied glaciers and meteorological conditions in
Switzerland.
In 1853, when it became known in the Royal Society
that the year's two gold medal awards were to go to
Charles Darwin for biology and to Tyndall for physics,
many of the Society members launched a campaign against
Tyndall. They felt that his work was not original as it
was based on that of physicists with whom he had worked
in Germany. The hapless physicist, who was disgusted
with the narrow views of his colleagues, sought the
advice of his mentor Michael Faraday, and accordingly

wrote to the president of the Society that he would not
accept the award.
VESALIUS, ANDREAS
Dr Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist and physician and
is best known for his great work, De human corporis fabrica,
which was published in 1543.
Born into a family long associated with the medical
care of the imperial dynasty, Vesalius received the doc-
tor of medicine degree from the University of Padua,
and he soon joined the faculty to teach surgery and
anatomy. It was while he was at Padua that he com-
posed the Fabrica, which remained influential for two
centuries and because of its typographical excellence and
remarkable woodcut illustrations, was one of the finest
examples of 16th century bookmaking. Vesalius moved
to Spain in 1559 and died on a ship voyage in 1564.
Sitting high above the dissection table and at a safe
distance from the evil-smelling cadaver, the professor of
surgery at Padua was imperiously directing his students
to dissect and expose the anatomical parts. The students

kept hacking away until Andreas Vesalius, a young Flemish
student, could take no more, and elbowed his way for-
ward, pushing the others aside. To the amazement of all,
he proceeded to separate and expose each organ and
tissue with a delicate precision and skill never seen be-
fore. The professor, Jocobus Sylvius, however was furi-
ous and he remained Vesalius' enemy till the end.
Vesalius's surgical skills were legendary. He dissected
every sort of animal he could find, to increase his skill of
mammalian anatomical structures. After public executions,
he would creep out in the dark of the night to exhume
corpses for his study. On one such nocturnal excursion,
Vesalius saw an almost intact skeleton swaying from its
chains, high up in the gallows. Scavenger birds had con-
sumed every bit of the deceased criminal's body, down
to the clean white bones. Vesalius carefully wired the
bones together in their natural positions and had his
first complete skeleton. He eventually knew every protu-
berance and depression of every bone in the skeleton in
a way no anatomist had ever done. And it stood like a
close friend at one end of his laboratory table, overlook-
ing every dissection he performed during the subsequent
years.
Sylvius had condemned his former student as a
"madman whose pestilential teachings were poisoning
Europe". Vesalius was shocked to know that he was
discredited even by his other colleagues and students at
the university. In disgust, he left Padua, never to
return. Vesalius was only thirty then but his career as a
scientist had ended. He accepted an invitation to the
Spanish court in 1559, where he became physician at the
court of Philip II.
The heavy hand of the Spanish Inquisition hindered
any advancement in the natural sciences and the dissec-
tion of the human body was considered a sacrilege. Wrote
Vesalius: "I could not even lay my hand upon a dried
skull, much less take the chance of making a dissection."

Eighteen years later, after his old enemy Sylvius had
died, Vesalius was invited back to Padua to take the
chair of anatomy. Savouring his moment of celebration,
Vesalius decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem be-
fore returning to Padua. On the return journey, he was
ship-wrecked during a violent storm, and died on a small
island off the Greek coast, where he was buried.
WATERTON, CHARLES
This British naturalist achieved fame for his collection of
species and for popularising the science of zoology among
the lay people. His eccentric behaviour, however, made
him a laughing stock and much of his later life was spent
as a recluse.
Legend has it that Waterton's love for animals went
to extraordinary lengths. For most of his life, he went to
bed accompanied by a huge boa constrictor, a little more
than four metres long, after he had kissed a tender
goodnight to a chimpanzee!
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE

Novelist (1866-1946)
Wells was the British novelist and writer of science fic-
tion. Born in Kent, England and in spite of an unfinished
education, Wells went on to become one of the greatest
science fiction writers ever and a respected social com-
mentator.
Wells's father was a shopkeeper and a professional
cricketer, and his mother, a housekeeper at a nearby estate.
He started writing in 1891, with an article called 'The
Rediscovery of the Unique' which was published in The
Fortnightly Review. The Time Machine, a science-fiction novel
of prophetic quality, came in 1895. That was followed by
six other works between 1896 and 1901, that established

Wells as a writer of repute; and these included The Island
of Dr Moreau (1896); The Invisible Man (1897); The War'of
the Worlds (1898); The First Men in the Moon (1901). His
later novels reflected his hostility to the Victorian social
order and its orthodoxy and his novels became all the
more prophetic with Anticipations (1903); Mankind in the
Making (1903); A Modern Utopia (1905). Wells' last book
of enduring value was his Experiment in Autobiography
(1934).
George Wells attended Morle's school in Bromley for
his real education which became a habit when he was laid
up in bed with a broken leg—omnivorous reading. Between
1880 and 1883, he was forced to spend most of his time as
a draper's apprentice in South Sea. He detested this expe-
rience so badly that he made this the theme of his novel,
Kipps, which he wrote almost twenty years later!
For some time, one of Wells'closest friends was George
Bernard Shaw, who claimed that he and Wells, between
them had 'changed the mind of Europe'. Both were
members of the famed Fabian Society, which Wells tried
to turn into a large-scale operation devoted to social and
political action. As a result of his views, he and Shaw
consequently fell out and he resigned from the Society in
1908. He described his whole bitter experience with the
Fabian Society in The New Machiavelli, in 1911.
The special conference on 'Science and the World
Order', held by the British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science in September 1941, took an unexpected
turn. H.G. Wells, the great populariser of science and not
always a favourite with scientists, was delivering his lecture.
Much before he had finished, he was asked by the chair
to cut short his address as he had overstepped his time.
Wells took this as a slight, but soon got his own back.
The next speaker happened to be Sir Lancelot Hogben,
who had been in the chair the earlier day and the chair-
person, none other than Wells. Hogben started speaking
and halfway through the speech, quite unexpectedly, he

was grabbed by the somewhat expansive seat of his trou-
sers and pulled down to his chair. Poor Hogben's ad-
dress came to an abrupt and rather undignified halt. And
Wells had the look that comes from a job done well.
WISLICENUS, JOHANNES
Chemist (1835-1902)
This German chemist did pioneer research on isomers.
Wislicenus was educated at Harvard and then at Zurich
University, where he subsequently became professor of
chemistry. He is also known for his work on acetoacetic
ester and its application as a synthetical agent and for
his synthesis in the pentamethylene series.
Shortly after the conclusion of peace between France
and Germany, a gathering of the German inhabitants of
Zurich decided to celebrate the occasion and Wislicenus
was nominated the chairperson. Soon after the function
started, some from the public forced their way in and
started attacking the audience with stones and set fire to
the staircase. In the ensuing panic, the scientist took charge
and appealed to the vandals to stop. He then proceeded
to, with utmost coolness, demonstrate to the audience
how fire could be extinguished most effectively with beer!
Wislicenus always gathered his students around him
at his simple mid-day meal. The warm feelings enter-
tained towards him by the students gave him keen plea-
sure, but he disliked any formal tokens. When he found
out, quite by accident, that preparations were afoot to
commemorate his approaching sixtieth birthday, he showed
his distress in the plainest possible fashion such that his
well-wishers had no alternative but to abandon the idea
of a formal celebration.
Appendix-I
Outline of Science
The environment of man consists of different spheres:

astrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere
and psychosphere. These spheres are not isolated and sealed
from one another, but are inter-permeative and interactive.
The happenings in one profoundly affect action in the rest. In
each sphere there are certain facts and phenomena firstly, for
observation and for explanation, and secondly, for control and
exploitation. Man meets these environmental challenges intel-
lectually by postulating theories to explain and understand these
facts and phenomena and then, through their understanding
bring about technological advances for the benefit of mankind.
Astrosphere
The theory of solar system
The theory of origin of our planet
Atmosphere, Lithosphere and Hydrosphere
The theory of the structure of earth
The theory of the structure of matter
The law of the periodicity of properties of elements
The theory of the tetrahedral carbon atom
The theory of radioactivity
The theory of heat
The theory of light
The theory of electromagnetic waves
The theory of relativity
Biosphere
The theory of cell
The theory of carbohydrate synthesis in plant life
The theory of evolution
The theory of circulation of blood
Appendix-II
Fields of Scientific Knowledge
No. Environment Action Science Practical Achievement
1. Astrosphere The sun, moon, Earth's rotation round its axis Astronomy Observatories (telescope,
the planets, the and revolution round the sun; Physics spectroscope, radio) and
star, interstellar rays from the sun, effect of Chemistry unmanned/manned
space. the sun and the moon on the satellites.
earth (tidal effect).
2. Atmosphere Different layers Climate and season zones— Meteorology Weather forecast, air-
and belts. arctic, temperate, and Aeronautics navigation, air-conditioning.
tropical. Physics
Chemistry
3. Lithosphere Mountains, valleys, Mining, farming. Geology Discovery of mineral deposits,
plains, deserts. Metallurgy petrol, agricultural instruments,
Chemistry dyes, fertilisers, and synthetic
products.
4. Hydropshere Sea, river, rain, Navigation, irrigation, Chemistry Steam engine, hydraulic power,
wells. industrial and potable water. Physics ships, dams, drainage.
5. Biosphere Living beings—macro Food, domestication, health Botany Cultivation of fruits,
and micro (animals, and disease. Zoology vegetables, antibiotics and
bacteria), vegetables, Bacteriology antioptics.
flowers, cereals.
6. Psychosphere Individuals Personality, habits, customs. Ethnology Community of nations,
Qasses Anthropology psychotherapy.
Nations Sociology
Races. Psychology
Appendix-II
Fields of Scientific Knowledge
No. Environment Action Science Practical Achievement
1. Astrosphere The sun, moon, Earth's rotation round its axis Astronomy Observatories (telescope,
the planets, the and revolution round the sun; Physics spectroscope, radio) and
star, interstellar rays from the sun, effect of Chemistry unmanned/manned
space. the sun and the moon on the satellites.
earth (tidal effect).
2. Atmosphere Different layers Climate and season zones— Meteorology Weather forecast, air-
and belts. arctic, temperate, and Aeronautics navigation, air-conditioning.
tropical. Physics
Chemistry
3. Lithosphere Mountains, valleys, Mining, farming. Geology Discovery of mineral deposits,
plains, deserts. Metallurgy petrol, agricultural instruments,
Chemistry dyes, fertilisers, and synthetic
products.
4. Hydropshere Sea, river, rain, Navigation, irrigation, Chemistry Steam engine, hydraulic power,
wells. industrial and potable water. Physics ships, dams, drainage.
5. Biosphere Living beings—macro Food, domestication, health Botany Cultivation of fruits,
and micro (animals, and disease. Zoology vegetables, antibiotics and
bacteria), vegetables, Bacteriology antioptics.
flowers, cereals.
6. Psychosphere Individuals Personality, habits, customs. Ethnology Community of nations,
Qasses Anthropology psychotherapy.
Nations Sociology
Races. Psychology
Appendix-III
Science, Scientist and Truth
To determine the status of truth in science it is necessary to

define the term 'truth' first. Truth is a multi-ordinal term which
acquires a different meaning in a different context. There could
broadly be three kinds of truths—historical, artistic, and sci-
entific. In all these three fields of cognitive approaches, we can
consider the imagination as a springboard to reach the ulti-
mate. When the imagination works on documentation, we get
the historical truth; when the imagination works on experi-
ence, we get the artistic truth; and when the imagination works
on experiment and observation, scientific truth is achieved.
Scientific truth is provisional while the artistic truth is peren-
nial. Tennyson in his Vision of Sin has said:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.
A statistically-oriented scientist may detect a falsehood
in the above couplet in view of the population explosion and
correct it to read as follows:
Every moment dies a man,
And one-and-sixteen is born.
Tennyson's eternal truth talks of a flux of life while in the
second case we see a provisional truth changing on the basis
of the demographic graph.
Dr Peter Medawer, Nobel laureate, has said that the goal
of the scientific world may be better represented as an asymp-
tote, a mathematical concept (a line which continually ap-
proaches a given curve but never meets it). In science there
can be no apodictic certairfty, i.e. there can be no final conclu-
sive certainty beyond the reach of criticism.
Through the process of evolution the Homo erectus be-
came the Homo sapien or the thinking man. He gave a condi-
SCIENCE, SCIENTIST AND TRUTH 219
tional gift of achieving the provisional truth. Lessing has wisely

said, "If God held enclosed in his right hand the absolute
truth and in his left hand simply the ever-moving impulse
towards truth, although with the condition that I should eter-
nally err and said to me 'choose', I would humbly bow before
his left hand and say 'Father, give. Pure truth is for thee
alone'." This difficult gift of God is invested with the precious
element of the continuous thought process.
Rutherford, when approached by a student who wanted
to do research work in nuclear physics, suggested, "Choose
another field since work in this field has been completed."
Future research was falsified and the nucleus that he discov-
ered was smashed into smithereens. If Lessing had opted for
the absolute truth, it would have spelt cognitive stagnation for
the human mind.
The status of truth in'respect of the work done by the
scientist is offered to his peers either for verification or for
falsification in the form of his submission in a scientific jour-
nal. This fact brings about the second facet of truth in respect
of the scientist himself. The facts discovered by him in respect
of a phenomenon carry the stamp of being amoral. However,
when a scientist works to reach it, he must have the seal of
absolute morality and faithfulness to the relevant methodol-
ogy by which he has reached his scientific conclusions. This
facet and the consequence of adherence to the mode of con-
duct is expressed by Dr J. Bronowski, one of the most eminent
physicists. Dr Bronowski worked on the atomic bomb project
and was deputed to Japan to observe the disastrous conse-
quences of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. After taking a
look, he chose to discontinue research on the atomic bomb. He
said, "The professional morality of scientists allows no com-
promises. It tells each man that he must report what he be-
lieves to be true, exactly and without suppression or editing.
Nowhere in a research journal is a scientist allowed to minimise
an awkward discrepancy or to stress a comforting confirma-
tion." This not so common code of morality of communication
stands supreme among the community of scientists. The
American Scientific Association has made it mandatory to seek
a pledge from the candidate that he loves truth for truth's
sake and that he would endeavour to communicate the truth
impartially.
A biographer of Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar began

the first chapter of his biography by quoting the last words of
the Nobel laureate, uttered during the award-giving ceremony
speech:
The simple is the seal of the true,
And beauty is the splendour of truth.
Simplicity and splendour of truth are the hallmarks of
scientific facts and the scientist.
Appendix-IV
Scientific Ideas and Ideals
Science today has accomplished the very basis on which it has

taken its stand—that is, the study of nature. The parameters
of such studies include learning to live with it, understanding
it, controlling it and exploiting it. To achieve the last dimen-
sion of exploitation, controlled exploitation was resorted to.
Science has succeeded on two fronts: liberating the mind from
superstitions and liberating the muscles by technology. These
advances in science are advances in concepts for clarifications
of the phenomenon, with the limitations that have already
been discussed in the preceding chapter on 'Science and Truth'.
The values of such advancing ideas receive recognition through
prestigious awards as the Nobel Prize. Scientific ideas are not
value oriented. They carry a cognitive mark of an explanatory
character for the matter under study. The second stage of
some of these ideas is to transfer the conceptual character into
an operational facility and thus the technological idea emerges.
The difference between these two phases of scientific progress
has been clearly stated by Edison. He invented numerous tech-
nological gadgets but missed one scientific idea. This scientific
idea was exploited by Ambrose Fleming and applied to tech-
nological application which made Edison remark, "I am not a
scientist. I am a technologist. Faraday is a scientist. I always
work on the size of the dollar."
What is the difference between a scientific idea, a tech-
nological idea and an ideal? The first two are concepts where
the first is a theoretical concept and the second, a pragmatic
concept. When a scientific idea evolves into a technological
idea and finds its operational aspect for human environment,
it achieves the status of an ideal. A book on cricket gives the
different types of ideas on the strokes that a batsman can
execute. However, when a 'little master' executes one such

stroke on the ground, the crowd in the gallery shouts, "That's
an ideal stroke!"
Scientific or technological ideas do not carry any value
judgement. Otto Hahn's discovery of the fission of atom was
evolved into a technological idea by Enrico Fermi as a chain
reaction with a stupendous release of energy. This use of the
release of energy led to the birth of the atom bomb or a reac-
tor, where the use of the first spelt disaster and use of the
second was a change of an idea into an ideal.
Appendix-IV
Humour,Humility and Humanism in Science
Humour, humility and humanism are the three values which

the scientist attempts to cultivate in his personal and social life
despite the detached values of the scientific attitude with which
he pursues his professional work. All three values, humour
particularly, reflect an attitude and outlook of the scientist.
Mahatma Gandhi had observed, "But for my sense of humour,
I might have committed suicide." The same idea was expressed
' by the noted scientist W.Raabe when he said, "A sense of
humour is the life-belt on the stream of life." Without going
through the philosophical analysis of humour, one may clas-
sify humour by what it brings you—laughter, smile. Such a
classification includes laughing at others, i.e. the mark of
detachment and pride; laughing with others, i.e. the mark of
happy association; and lastly, laughing at oneself, i.e. the mark
of self-analysis. All these values are expressed in the work and
the life style of a scientist. Take the instance of laughing at
others. Galileo once wrote to Kepler in a letter: "Kepler, how
I wish that we could have a hearty laugh together, principal
professor of philosophy, whom I have repeatedly requested to
look at the moon and planets through my glass but who perr
tinaciously refuses to do so."
The case of laughing with others is best expressed in the
case of poems. In the heydays of the Cavendish laboratory,
which was under J.J. Thomson and Rutherford, a meeting of
scientists was organised and the proceedings printed under
the title Postprandial Proceedings of the Cavendish Society. Cer-
tain lines of the poem recited at the function provide evidence
of laughing together:
When the professor has solved a new riddle,
Or found a fresh fact, he's fit as a fiddle.
He goes to the tea-room and sits in the middle

And jokes about everything under the sun.
Then if you try to look grate at his jest,
You'll burst off the buttons which fasten your vest.
For when he starts chaffing,
Your tea you'd be quaffing,
You cannot help laughing
Along with the rest.
The last aspect of laughing at oneself points to the important
value of humility in the scientist. Liebig, who missed discov-
ering bromine, labelled his bottle wrongly as 'iodine chloride'.
He then put that bottle in a cupboard and called it a 'cup-
board of my mistakes'. Since then he resolved not to make any
more theories till they could be directed and supported by
unambiguous experiments. In another instance, Dr Alferd Castler,
a Nobel laureate, once pointed out, "When a scientist looks at
the development of science from within, the predominant feel-
ing is not of pride but of humility, for each new triumph of
science and each new principle discovered is what I might
almost describe as a principle of recognition of limitations."
In the trinity of these values (humour, humility and hu-
manism), the last one is perhaps the most important and forms
part of the other two values too. Humanism in the process of
definition gets crowded in semantic theories. However, Walter
Lippmann says, "Humanism signifies the intention of men to
concern themselves with the discovery of a good life on this
planet by the use of human faculties." This definition his a
personal facet while the terminal aspect of humanism is shown
by one's concern for human beings. To further elaborate the
two facets of humanism—personal and terminal—two instances
are being cited.
Just after the last Great War, a General told Dr Albert
Einstein with great pride that in the last war their casualties
were relatively very small. At this Einstein asked, "General,
relative to what?" This question by the proponent of the theory
of relativity is similar to the argument put forth after the
complete destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic-
bomb, when it was argued that the bombing saved relatively
the loss of manpower of the forces alive. In his argument
Einstein posed the basic question on ethics: "Is ethics relative
HUMOUR, HUMILITY AND HUMANISM IN SCIENCE 225
to a situation or is ethics absolute as velocity of light?"

Einstein's reply shows that the ethic of humanism is not
situation oriented but is an absolute action. This terminal value
of humanism is represented in Dr Soltin's sacrifice of his own
life to save the lives of his colleagues. Dr Soltin, involved with
the atomic bomb project, was working with his seven col-
leagues in his laboratory on the scientific aspects of the radio-
active element—plutonium. Suddenly the screwdriver slipped
and the two pieces of plutonium, large enough to form a
sufficient mass to start a chain reaction, filled the room with
radioactivity. Dr Soltin, realising the danger to his colleagues,
shouted to them to leave the laboratory, marked the place
where they were standing, and then separated the two pieces
of the radioactive material with his own hands. He knew that
it meant an end of his life, but he also knew that his col-
leagues, due to his directions in pin-pointing their places, would
be exposed to minimum dose of lethal radiation and be saved.
The young Soltin died of exposure to radiation nine days later.
J. Bronowski, in his tribute to Soltin's act of humanism and
morality, said, "This is the highest morality—to combine hu-
man love with unflinching scientific judgement."
Appendix-IV
Role of Anecdotes in
Value Education
Educational institutions are today facing the uphill task of

implanting proper values during the process of knowledge
education, at a time when the basic roots of individual moral-
ity can be seen lying stranded in a climate of moral uncer-
tainty. According to the India Office records, Lord Wavell, in
his farewell letter to the King, had written: "Education is the
thing we have done worst in India, I believe, because we have
provided education for the mind only and not the character.
As a result, the average educated Indian has little character
and no discipline. They will have to learn both if they are ever
to become a nation."
This frank and self-critical observation of Lord Wavell
holds true today too, even after more than four decades of it
being made. When India achieved Independence, Prof. Laski
made a very sarcastic remark to an Indian student, "Your
Independence will lapse into a state of anarchy followed by
tyranny and then swing back into great anarchy."
The student boldly replied, "It will be our tyranny and
our anarchy."
This was indeed true but how ironical it was that the
Indian student answered back so hopefully and not helplessly,
possibly not realising what lay ahead for him and his compan-
ions.
Conceptual Approach to Value Education

The term 'values' may refer to interests, pleasures, likes, pref-
erences, duties, moral obligations, desires, wants, needs, aver-
sions, attractions, and many other modalities of selective ori-
ROLE OF ANECDOTES IN VALUE EDUCATION 227
entation. One of the most widely accepted definitions in social

science is that values are concepts which are most desired and
influence selective behaviour. Values serve as criteria for se-
lection of action. When explicit and fully conceptualised, val-
ues become the criteria for judgement, preference, and choice;
when implicit and unreflective, values nevertheless perform
as if they constituted grounds for decision in behaviour. Hu-
man beings show preference for some things over others; they
select one course of action rather than another out of a range
of possibilities, and they do judge the conduct of other men.
The basic components may therefore be considered to be
firstly, cognitive for reasoning out what is most desirable from
all that is desired; secondly, connative to determine a behavioural
pattern—be it of utility or pragmatic; and thirdly, affective so
as to influence the action on the basis of emotions and feel-
ings.
A value (or belief) about the desirable, therefore, involves
some knowledge about the means or ends considered to be
desirable; some degree of effect or feeling, because values are
not neutral but influenced by personal feelings and generate
effect when challenged; and the behavioural component, when
a value that is activated may lead to action.
Values referring to modes of conduct are called instru-
mental values and encompass concepts of honesty, love, re-
sponsibility and courage. Values referring to end-states of
existence are called terminal values, and include such concepts
as freedom, equality, a world at peace, and inner harmony.
Operational Approach to Value Education

As to how the values can be activated invariably leads to a
clash of views in respect of desirability of such an approach.
The prime function of any educational institution should be to
inculcate values in the students, though some people believe
that values must not be taught but caught, and hence the
whole environmental profile of the institute must achieve this
objective. It is therefore pertinent to find a golden mean be-
tween 'taught' and the 'not taught but caught' by devising the
totality of instructional/non-instructional approach for implanting
the values. Jacob W. Getzels, in his article on 'Schools and
Values' (Centre Magazine, May-June 1976), finds that the con-

temporary youngsters, due to lack of visible and consistent
models for identification, find themselves in a situation that
creates difficulties in social adaptation. He contends that it is
not sufficient to teach values or to clarify values; teachers and
other adults must also act as models with whom the young
can identify. Educators often lecture students about the im-
portance of acquisition of 'appropriate' values without dem-
onstrating through their own actions what those values are.
The modes of learning values have been classified in four
categories. There are four E's for implanting values in the
general process of teaching: exhortation, example, expectation
and experience.
• Exhortation : Telling what is right and what is wrong; to live by
certain sets of standards.
• Example : Moral model in an environment; learning depends on
the learner's feelings towards the model.
• Expectation : Confirming the expectations to a classroom envi-
ronment.
• Experience : Act of involvement in certain experiences.
The moral educational movement supporting the four
E's further mentions some steps for implementation of value
education. Firstly, such a value behaviour must be chosen freely;
secondly, the chosen value must fall into a behavioural pattern
different to value-oriented alternatives; thirdly, the chosen value
must not be felt as imposed upon but cherished privately;
fourthly, the chosen value as a behavioural pattern must have
public acknowledgment; and lastly, such value-oriented
behavioural pattern must not be an occasional instance but a
permanent feature of one's character.
Classification and Role of Anecdotes in

Value Education
The two-fold analysis of value education—conceptual and op-
erational approach—must be examined with reference to the
role that anecdotes play (general/scientific) to achieve value
orientation in the teaching process of different disciplines. Short
stories can easily be classified as fables, parables and anec-
dotes. A fable has been defined as a story not founded on fact,
but has generally animals as characters and carries a moral.
ROLE OF ANECDOTES IN VALUE EDUCATION 229
Aesop developed it superbly into Aesop's Fables. Aesop being

a slave took animals as his characters for moral education so
as not to insult his Greek elitist masters. A parable has been
defined as a narration of imagined events—allegory used to
typify moral or spiritual relations. This valuable attention-
catching technique was used very successfully by Jesus Christ
and Ramakrishna Paramhansa in their public sermons. The
third type of short stories—anecdotes—has been defined as
the narration of a detached incident or a single event, told as
being in itself interesting or striking. The distinction between
the first two (fable, parable) and the third (anecdote) is that
the first category is in the imaginary field while the second is
based on reality.
Anecdotes, being narrations of various personalities dur-
ing different fields of activities, invariably have something
new to tell. The Oxford University Press has published liter-
ary anecdotes both of English and American personalities. Then
there are legal anecdotes, anecdotes of theatre, while we offer
anecdotes of scientists. The linking of such anecdotes for value
education has a two-fold approach: during a lecture, while
developing a specific discipline the anecdotes must be linked
to the field; and since the anecdote of specific discipline does
not rely on the discipline which is being pursued but on the
character of that person, it can be used to elucidate a point in
value education.
The profession of the scientist entails firstly, teaching his
discipline while conducting research in his discipline, reading
and learning for expanding his sphere of knowledge and at
times, cutting across boundaries of other disciplines to create
inter-disciplinary subjects. Secondly, attending to his personal
and social life. The values needed for the first aspect, espe-
cially with reference to research, are pursued with a scientific
attitude which involves analytical observation of his problem
along with the objective of his work viewed with a detached
mind. All these are cool objectives devoid of purpose, while
the second facet of his personal life—'detached attitude'—
must be avoided. In both facets, the cluster of values may be
summed up as morality of training and commitment. The
morality of commitment may be exhibited in the surgical per-
formance of Lord Moyniham, the great British surgeon. Lord
230 ForSCIENCE
OF Evaluation Only.
AND SCIENTISTS
Moyniham had just finished operating before a gallery full of

distinguished visiting doctors, when he turned to them and
said, "You see, there are just three persons present in the
operating room when I operate—the patient and myself."
"But that is only two," his questioner commented. "Who
is the third?"
Moyniham responded, "The third is God."
On the other hand, Dr Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate
in physics, was an excellent teacher of physics. BBC in their
programme 'Horizon' arranged for his participation. A Mrs
Marcus Chown, the mother of a graduate student of Dr Feynman,
who never listened to science programmes was induced by
her son to listen to this transmission. She was so thrilled by
it that she sat right through the programme. The son, who
knew his mother's aversion to scientific subjects, decided that
if his guide were to write a personal letter to his mother, her
interest in science would be sustained. Dr Feynman, to please
his student, wrote the following letter to his mother, "Dear
Mrs Chown, ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics.
Physics is not the most important thing; love is! Best wishes,
Richard Feynman."
While Lord Moyniham represents the pursuit of his pro-
fession with devotional commitment, Nobel laureate Feynman
throws light on the value of love in professional work. These
two anecdotes bring out the value orientation both in profes-
sional work and personal life of a scientist.
The present day stress on curriculum content has brought
about complete neglect of value education. T.S. Eliot has said,
"Where is wisdom that is lost in knowledge and where is
knowledge that is lost in information?" This observation of the
poet holds particularly true now with the emergence of so-
phisticated computers. Had Eliot been alive, he would have
asked, "Where is the computerised information that offers
relevant knowledge and where is the relevant knowledge that
ought to be sublimated in wisdom?"
Index
Agassiz, Jean Louis 1 Sklodowska and Curie,
Aldus Salam 4 Pierre 46
Al-Razi, Muhammad 4 Dalton, John 51
Archimedes 5 Darwin, Charles Robert 54
Arrhenius, Svante August 8 Davy, Sir Humphrey 58
Aryabhatta 9 Dirac, Paul Adrian Maurice 60
Bacon, Roger 10 Dumas, J.B.A. 62
Baeyer, Johann Friedrich Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley 63
Adolf von 12 Edison, Thomas Alva 64
Banting, Sir Fredrick Grant 13 Ehrlich, Paul 68
Berthelot, Marcelin 16 Einstein, Albert 69
Berzelius, Baron Jons Jakob 17 Enders, John Franklin 78
Bhabha, Homi 19 Euclid 79
Black, Joseph 20
Faraday, Michael 81
Bohm, David 21
Fermi, Enrico 86
Bohr, Aage 22
Feynman, Richard 88
Bohr, Niels 23
Fleming, Sir Alexander 90
Bose, Sir Jagadish Chandra 27 Fleming, John Ambrose 91
Bose, Satyendra Nath 30 Franklin, Benjamin 92
Bragg, Sir William Henry 31 Fulton, Robert 94
Bragg, Sir William Lawrence 33
Brahe, Tycho de 34 Galileo, Galilei 95
Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm von 36 Galvani, Luigi 98
Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis 99
Carroll, Lewis 38 Giraud, Marius 100
Cavendish, Henry 39
Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich 100
Chandrasekhar, S. 41
Hahn, Otto 101
Charles, Jacques Alexandre
Haldane, John Burdon
Cesar 43
Copernicus, Nicolaus 43 Sandersen 104
Crick, Francis 45 Hall, Charles M. and
Curie, Marie (Marja) Heroult, Pant-Lotiis-
Tousaint 105
Halstead, William Stewart 106 • Nobel, Alfred Bernhard 161

Hardy, Godfrey Harold 107
Hawking, Stephen 108 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 163
Heisenberg, Werner Karl 110 Pasteur, Louis 166
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia 113 Pauli, Wolfgang 169
Herschel, Sir John Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich 173
Fredrick William 114 Planck, M a x 174
Humboldt, Baron Alexander von 114Poincare, Henri 175
Hunter, John 116 Porter, John Roger 176
Huxley, Sir Julian 118
Huxley, Sir Thomas Henry 119 Raman, Sir Chandrasekhara
Venkata 177
Ibn Khaldun 123 Ramanujan, Srinivasa 179
Ibn Sina, Abu Ali 123 Ramon Y. Cajal Santiago 182
Joliot, Frederic 125 Rammelsberg, Carl Friedrich 183
Ramsay, Sir William 184
Kapitza, Peter Leonidovich 126 Ray, Prafulla Chandra 185
Kelvin, Lord William Rayleigh, Lord John 189
Thomson 127 Roentgen, Wilhelm Conrad 190
Kepler, Johannes 130 Rutherford, Lord Ernest 191
Koch, Robert 132
Saha, M e g h n a d 193
Lalande, Joseph Jerome Sahni, Birbal 195
le Francaise de 135 Salk, Jonas E d w a r d 195
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent 136 Shaler, Nathaniel 196
Linnaeus, Carl 138 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm 197
Lister, Lord Joseph 139 Schweitzer, Albert 199
Lorenz, Konrad 141 Semmelweis, Ignaz Philipp 201
Mahalanobis, P.C. 142 Siebold, von Carl Theodor •
Margulis, Lynn 142 Ernst 201
Maxwell, James Clark 143 Simpson, Sir James Young 202
Mc Clintock, Barbara 144 Steinmetz, Charles 'Proteus' 202
Mendel, Gregor 145 Stephenson, George 204
Mendeleev, Dmitri Ivanovich 148 Tesla, Nikola 205
Millikan, Robert A n d r e w 150 Thales 206
Mond, Ludwig 152 Thoreau, Henry David 207
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese 153 Tyndall, John 209
Moseley, Henry
Gwyn-Jeffreys 154 Vesalius, Andreas 210
Muller, Hermann Joseph 155 Waterton, Charles 212
Nernst, Walther H e r m a n n 156 Wells, Herbert George 212
Newton, Sir Isaac 157 Wislicenus, Johannes 214
Printed at Kapoor Art Press, A38/3, Mayapuri, Phase I, New Delhi - 110 064
Although abundance of material is available in the form of
biographies and writings of scientists, very little information
is found on what made these scientists not only great
discoverers but humane too, blessed with humour, humility
and humanism like us, the lesser known mortals. Science is
in a continuous state of progression and those involved in
this unique adventure bring out the modes and methods of
their investigation. The basic discoveries of scientific
investigation have been discussed in different essays in this
book with the hope that the layman may achieve 'scientific
literacy', even if it is in a small measure.
A. N. Kothare, born in 1906, taught both physics and chemistry

for more than six decades at the University of Bombay. He
received the 1968 Gold Medal from Paul VI and the
Outstanding Teacher Award of 1971 from the government
of Maharashtra. He died while this book was under print.
S. S. Palsule is currently a faculty member at the International
People's College in Denmark where he teaches environmental
and philosophical studies. Prior to this he taught at St. Xavier's
College, Bombay.
S. M. Parekh, born in 1921, is Joint Director of the Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan, Bombay and has teaching experience of more
than forty years.
M. P. Navalkar, born in 1929, has served as head of the
Training Division at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
and has nearly forty years of experience in the field.
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What is the purpose of including anecdotes about scientists according to the foreword?

What is the purpose of including anecdotes about scientists according to the foreword?

What are some of the key discoveries and scientists mentioned in the book?

What are some of the key discoveries and scientists mentioned in the book?

POPULAR SCIENCE

NATIONAL BOOK TRUST, INDIA

First Edition 1994 (Saka 1916)

© A.N. Kothare, 1994

Published by the Director, National Book Trust, India

Anecdotes from the Lives of Scientists 1

As one grows old, one recalls with pleasure incidents

management. Scientific education is the sine qua non of

Prof. Kothare (87) is a veteran educationist with six

We, the authors, express our deep sense of gratitude to

The three primary questions that scientists direct towards

the shoulders of intellectual giants).

centres in industries and political involvement in mission-

plate on the entry-door of Plato's academy carried the

has not only the 'magnification' but also the 'resolving'

different aspects of scientific adventures. The first

gravitational theory and justified it on the basis of the

drew from him the following observation, "It was quite

part of the human body without surgically opening it.

he sees one of his students proceed further and higher

the structure on the basis of the evidence of X-ray. The

AGASSIZ, JEAN LOUIS

Poissons Fossiles, in which he named nearly 1,000 fossil

was then brought in for comparison. The sketch bore an

on the old barn incomplete. Undaunted, Agassiz called

ALDUS SALAM (Servant of Peace)

Arabic Galen (after the legendary Greek physician Galen),

geometry, was also responsible for certain areas of stat-

unaware of his state of undress!

handed giants of mythology." It seems that the Roman

ARRHENIUS, SVANTE AUGUST

been viable spores driven through space by the pressure

concept of the earth as a spherical object rotating around

natural light and the rainbow. However due to his differ-

science," wrote Bacon, "neither receives wealth nor seeks

BAEYER, JOHANN FRIEDRICH ADOLF VON

the most common. Among his other notable students

BANTING. SIR FREDRICK GRANT

meant certain death. Banting was, incidentally the first

not be able to save your life," the Army doctor

faction of our private vanity that the world today pays

BERZELIUS, BARON JONS JAKOB

thorium, and with the isolation of silicon, molybdenum

try. To console Wohler for his failure to identify and

had every right to be there. After giving the problem a

ness of those experiments by which he had formerly made

invention, the young David Bohm lost all interest in

Apart from their shared interest in physics, father

of metals, which to this day, is considered a classic. His

"You must be quite wrong. My name is Baker." On closer

statesmen and politicians, calling for a policy of open-

When Niels Bohr visited the Physics Institute of the

BOSE, SIR JAGADISH CHANDRA

Chandra Bose was one of the pioneers of modern science

All the great scientists of London had assembled to

signs of fatigue after continued use. He began to wonder