Ruchira comments on the article in the Discover Magazine and their choice of seven most magical eureka moments in the history of science.
They are:
* Otto Lowei: discovering the chemical transmission of nerve impulses
* Rene Descartes: developing the Cartesian co-ordinate system of perpendicular lines and planes
* Nikola Tesla: designing the alternate current motor
* Edwin Hubble: discovering the existence of galaxies outside the Milky Way
* Robert Hooke: discovery of the cell as the building block of all living organisms
* Henry Becquerel: discovery of radioactivity
* Alexander Fleming: discovery of penicillin
Agree or disagree?
Didn't Darwin have an 'a-ha!' moment when reading Malthus? How about Kekule's dream?
Comments
How about Galileo : Getting the Smackdown
Einstein's happiest thought? Dunno if that was a eureka moment.
Posted by: Rob Knop | July 19, 2007 1:44 AM
Rutherford et al., discovery of the atomic nucleus?
Posted by: Electric Dragon | July 19, 2007 3:07 AM
The Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton had a famous eureka! moment while walking by Dublin's Royal Canal. He had been working on mathematical entities he called quaternions, basically an extension of the complex plane into 4 dimensions.
Hamilton suddenly realised that his quaternions would work if their multiplication was not commutative. Real multiplication is commutative because a x b = b x a. For quaternions, Hamilton wrote a x b = - b x a. A non-commutative multiplication is quite counter-intuitive, particularly so in the 19th century.
He was so elated that he carved the equation onto a canal bridge with a penknife. A plaque commemorates the incident today.
Quaternions themselves proved to be a dead end mathematically, but the idea of a non-commutative multiplication became very important when vector calculus was invented and as methematicians studied generalized structures likes rings and fields.
Not sure if Hamilton should make the top 7, but definitely the top 20.
Posted by: Toby | July 19, 2007 4:43 AM
Trog the Caveman: discovering that knocking flints together over piles of dry grass makes fire
Me (aged two-and-a-bit): discovering that said fire really really hurts.
Posted by: Paul A | July 19, 2007 6:18 AM
The original "Eureka!" moment should qualify, certainly more than the AC generator/motor or penicillin if we go for basic science. That would put the atom above radioactivity, too.
[The link feed was so slow that I haven't read the original article. So I may misunderstand the context here.]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 19, 2007 9:42 AM
Darwin had an even bigger aha! when he read Lyell and applied Malthus.
I have aha! moments too, but I usually forget them after a few minutes while I wait for Word to open to write it down...
Posted by: Kevin Z | July 21, 2007 1:00 AM
And no Archimedes, the scientist that invented the Eureka?, bah.
Posted by: Nico Rivas | July 21, 2007 9:08 PM