Monday, August 22, 2005
Science As Brand
During our Baltic adventures, I happened by the Nobel Museum in Stockholm with a very real purpose. My very good friend that past away recently had a great uncle, Wendell Stanley, that won the Nobel in 1946 for discovering that a virus was a chunk of DNA and not an organism. I wanted to get some material on Wendell for my friend's kids, one of whom is named for him.
I was sorely disappointed, the museum was almost wholly devoted to Einstein, with a few mentions of other very notable winners, most of the Peace Prize. So I sort of rolled my eyes when I read this story.
He was a brilliant physicist, but dead wrong about some things, and no more brilliant than many that preceded and followed him. It really honks me off that he gets so much attention when there is so much good and meaningful science that has been done by people with lesser press agents.
I was sorely disappointed, the museum was almost wholly devoted to Einstein, with a few mentions of other very notable winners, most of the Peace Prize. So I sort of rolled my eyes when I read this story.
The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.So what? The paper was published,the work is widely known -- attaching value to this manuscript is about the person of Einstien and has nothing to do with the science. Einstein has become a brand.
He was a brilliant physicist, but dead wrong about some things, and no more brilliant than many that preceded and followed him. It really honks me off that he gets so much attention when there is so much good and meaningful science that has been done by people with lesser press agents.
