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Great Genius

It is very rare when a true genius is born and even rarer when this genius is able to change the way our technology is headed. I have always wondered about how many geniuses were born in a century. The reason I say this is not all of them would ever have a chance to become known. If they were born in really poor third world countries, they may not have had a chance to go to school, or have anyway of advancing our culture. When it is said there is only one true genius of the stature of Einstein born every hundred years, I have to believe this is not the case. When Einstein worked on the Manhattan Project, he was surrounded by geniuses such as Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman and Niels Bohr. Then there was Nikola Tesla and probably a few others we never heard of.

Enrico Fermi was born in 1901 to a government official. While in school it was discovered he had an aptitude for mathematics. He also showed he was incredibly talented in the field of physics. When this was realized he was encouraged to pursue these two fields. He received a doctor’s degree in physics in 1922 from Pisa University. He kept improving his position and became a lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence. In 1927 he was elected Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome and received the Nobel Prize and then left for America. He was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. He was appointed Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York. His experiments led to the emission o secondary neutrons and of a chain reaction. The United States government asked Fermi to work at the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb and he accepted.

Richard Feynman was born in 1918 in New York. When he was sent to school his genius was noticed by his teachers and he was immediately put in higher math classes. When he was given an IQ test in school his score was only 125, but it was suspected there was a problem with the test, but it was found his ability was genius when it came to math and physics. It was said he just didn’t care about spelling and such. At fifteen years old he had already taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry and both differential and integral calculus. Before he went to college, he was designing his own mathematical notation to use for topics such as half-derivative. He switched from mathematics to electrical engineering then to physics. He had been rejected by Columbia University, but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was glad to accept him. He graduated with a degree and scored a perfect score on the Princeton University test in physics but did poorly in history and English. He was said to be the most advanced physicist on earth at 23 years old. He married his wife who was deathly ill at the time with TB which was incurable. After the marriage ceremony she was taken to the hospital. He joined the Manhattan project in 1941.

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia. His father was an Orthodox priest and his mother managed the family farm. When he was seven years old his brother died and he began to see visions, which influenced his life until he died. Tesla attended the Technical University of Graz and took philosophy at the University of Prague. He invented the idea of the brushless electric motor. He came to the United States in 1884 and went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison had told him he would pay him $50,000 to improve the design of his DC dynamos. It took Tesla a few months but he succeeded and presented the plans to Edison who then refused to pay him. Tesla quit. He was reduced to digging ditches for $2.00 a day. He finally found backers for his alternating current project and was granted over 30 patents. George Westinghouse discovered Tesla and since he was Edison’s major competitor, he hired Tesla. He licensed the patents for his AC motor and gave Tesla his own lab. Tesla went on to demonstrate AC current and wireless transmission of electricity along with remote control of objects powered by electric motors and demonstrated things like a death ray.

Sometimes being a genius can mean you are only a genius in one area and you can be far below par in others. Srinivasa Ramanujan was this type of genius. He was born in India in 1887 and died at the tender age of 32 years old in 1920. He was a mathematical genius. He had almost zero formal training, but was so advanced in math he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions and solved some mathematical problems which had been considered unsolvable. His genius for math was developed in solitude. When he tried to demonstrate his work in India the other scientists didn’t understand it. In 1913 he became a pen pal of the English mathematician G.H. Hardy who worked at the University of Cambridge in England. Hardy recognized the fact his work was that of a genius. Hardy admitted Ramanujan had solved mathematical problems which he could not. His work became the basis of many advanced mathematical projects. His notebooks have been studied for decades.

Paul Dirac was a physicist who was considered to be one of the most notable physicists of the twentieth century. He was born in Bristol, England in 1902. His father was a French teacher and his mother was a librarian. He had felt overwhelmed by his father’s authority over him. When his father died, he said he felt a lot freer. He went to Merchant Venturers’ Technical College. He studied electrical engineering on a Bristol University Scholarship. He later went to St. John’s College on a scholarship. He graduated with honors and was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. He received a second degree in 1923 with a scholarship from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research along with his original scholarship from St. John’s College. He then pursued his interest in general relativity and in quantum physics. He received his PhD in 1926. He submitted the first thesis on quantum mechanics. He continued his pursuits in physics until his death in 1984.

All of the scientists mentioned above were geniuses by any measurement and were giants in their fields, therefore I have to reject the notion that geniuses like Einstein are only born once in a century.

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