Talk With Ikrma

This dialogue took place during the dinner:

I: Have you seen the photo I uploaded in the chat? Do you know who he is?

Ikrma: Yes, Nikola Tesla, my favorite scientist. If I can go back and meet someone, I will definately choose him.

I: Really? Why?

Ikrma: He gave up nearly all his patents. He did researches for fun and humanity. Nikola Tesla was a scientist while Thomas Edison was a business man.

I: That makes sense. Even in the scientific circle, Tesla is rare. Many scientists have great contributions, but they are too obsessed about the fame.

Ikrma: yes.

I: You know Newton and Gauss, right? Newton fought with Leibniz about the priority of calculus and Gauss fought with Legendre about the priority of least square.

Ikrma: yes.

I: There are also other examples. Laplace, French mathematician, wrote his book but didn’t cite the work of others, which would make the reader believe that these all belong to him. Einstein, in his 1905 paper raising up the idea of special relativity, didn’t cite the work of Lorentz and Poincare, which made some people believe that he deliberately did so to make the reader think that he was the only one who thought up special relativity.

Ikrma: yes, possibly.

I: You know Faraday, right? He also didn’t care about the fame or money. He invented many instruments for his electromagnetic research. But, he never used these to make money. If he did, he would be as rich as Thomas Edison.

I: And Rosalind Franklin. Once, someone asked her if she was upset that Watson and Crick “robbed” her discovery of the structure of DNA. She said “That is not important. The double helix is important.”

I: And Kelvin. He rediscovered the work of George Green. He could say that this is his work (Laplace and Einstein would possibly do so), but he didn’t, and contributed this all to Green.

Ikrma: The world is fair. History is fair. Now Tesla is more famous than Edison. Everyone see the car of Elon Musk will ask “Who is Tesla? Why Elon Musk use his name?”

I: Yes.

I: Fame means a lot, more money, more project. I don’t want to blame Newton and Gauss, those who are obsessed of fame. In the future, I will also fight with someone for the priority of something. But, people like Faraday, Tesla, Kelvin and Franklin, should get more respect.

Ikrma: Yes.

Underline:

I don’t want to blame Newton and Gauss, those who are obsessed of fame. In the future, I will also fight with someone for the priority of something. But, people like Faraday, Tesla, Kelvin and Franklin, should get more respect.

In China, we call this “身不能至，心向往之”