Some Eccentric Scientists

A more recent scientist, who made somewhat of a name for himself in experimental circles, despite being a theoretical physicist, was Wolfgang Pauli, an Austrian who is best remembered, perhaps, for the Pauli principle in physics but also, among many, for the Pauli ‘effect’. Pauli was a clumsy experimentalist and a notably poor lecturer but was a brilliant theoretician.... Read More...

A more recent scientist, of whom I know something at second-hand, is Geoffrey Hardy, the mathematician at Oxford whose textbook on pure mathematics was compulsory study for many undergraduates in the 1940-1960 period. A lifelong bachelor, Hardy lived with his sister in Oxford and in addition to pursuing his studies and supervision in Oxford, had several graduate students which he advised at the University of Bristol.... Read More...

One of the most unusual figures in science in the last number of centuries is perhaps Robert Hooke, a man for which I have considerable sympathy and admiration. Without examining his early life in any significant way, he was a graduate of Westminster School and entered Oxford University at the time at which Sir Isaac Newton was first making his name. He came from a poor family on a scholarship, and was generally derided by his colleagues at that time.... Read More...

“What I like about scientists,” said John Wilmott, Minister of supply 1945-47 in the United Kingdom Government, “ is that they are a team so that one need not know their names.” It is perhaps from public statements of this kind that the public gets the predominant impression of the scientist as a colorless, odorless, passionless pioneer who works continually and unemotionally in the far off corner of some dreary and aseptic laboratory. Scientists are different but not different from each other.... Read More...