1.3. The Great Scientist Theory#
I’ll bet that you think of physics as strange symbols and dry prose memorialized between the covers of big books and obscure journals. There are books! But at its most basic: physics is about people. Every once in a while, someone does something amazing – they reinterpret some phenomenon differently or have an idea that nobody else has. Everyone I work with is smart. But there have been some scary-smart people in the history of science and I’d like for you to meet many of them. Not only because their lives and discoveries are great stories, but I think the people side of things lubricates the details.
I’ve found that the physics content will stay in your mind because you’ll easily associate it with someone’s life story. So rather than stick a little scientific biography in a sidebar like many books, I’ve built all of Quarks, Spacetime, and the Big Bang around people. Each lesson begins with: “A Little Bit of X” where X is the host of that lesson’s topic. Sometimes your host will be someone you’ve heard of (“A Little Bit of Einstein,” “A Little Bit of Newton,” and so on) or sometimes your host will be someone you don’t recognize (“A Little Bit of Huygens,” “A Little Bit of Kepler,” “A Little Bit of Dirac,” and so on). Once you’re acquainted, the flow of that lesson will follow each host as they change physics forever.
By the way, there are thousands of productive scientists whom I don’t single out with “A Little Bit of …Smith.” Smith might have been a productive scientist, but she’s like the vast majority of us. We’re good at our jobs, but we don’t build worlds.
No, here we’re going to highlight those Amazing People. Heroes to whom my friends and I are professionally, and even emotionally, connected. We talk about them all the time at lunch. Our conferences have special sessions devoted to them.
Most historians dislike what’s sometimes called the Great Man Theory which aims to explain major events in world history through the actions of a single person. The 19th century GMT typically includes a narrative about this person as born with superior qualities and destined for the great (or evil) outcomes that he would induce — we’ve all heard these stories. Sometimes the history of science is presented this way and, predictably, many professional historians don’t like this either.
Let me use an analogy for my own Great Scientist Theory. Play Ball!