Collider World | Peter's Log

Mad Scientists

Today I found myself thinking about the great scientists that throughout history rocked our understanding of the world and the universe. Names like Aristotle, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Hawking and so many others came to mind.

Science evolves thanks to those who are ahead of their time, but that also means that most of those revolutionary and courageous pioneers were first misunderstood and only later recognized. Now they are praised for their amazing discoveries but they were once viewed as mad scientists.

Copernicus is a great example. He was the first to postulate that the sun is the centre of the solar system, displacing the Earth from the centre of the universe, as it was commonly believed at the time.

He was severely criticized. It was a revolutionary theory that striped the Earth of its astronomical importance and that simply did not make sense for people at the time. But the heliocentric theory introduced by Copernicus, though imperfect, was correct.

Galileo was able to support Copernicus belief by dedicating his life to the observation of planets and to the improvement of the telescope. And although his research lead to a life of persecution from the Church, Galileo was able to show that the sun was actually the centre of the solar system and that the Earth was round.

Kepler then corrected his predecessors by proving that the planets move around the sun in an elliptical orbit, rather than in a circular one. His three laws of planetary movement were paramount to Newton’s work on gravity and shaped the history of astronomy and physics.

Newton’s law of universal gravitation and his three laws of movement changed the path of science once again.

Until, two centuries later, the most famous mad scientist of all time proved that Newton was wrong in his premise that time and space were absolute. Einstein put the whole universe in question with his Theory of Relativity, shaking the foundations of classical physics.

As Einstein did, so did Bohr when he postulated about the atomic structure.

He realized that the rules of classical physics did not apply at a subatomic level, so he used Planck’s quantum theory to dissect the atom, giving birth to a whole new field of science – Quantum Physics.

I hope you understand that I’m not trying to give you a history lesson; I just want you to understand… The greatest geniuses of science were, in certain times of history, considered crazy. But they were the ones that dared to think differently, the ones that were brave enough to try new approaches.

They can call me a mad scientist all they want. The future – if it still exists – will be the truth teller.

All I can say is thank you. Thank you for reading and watching my story. I prepared this little video to tell you just that. Click the thumbnail below or watch it on the sidebar.

I know I can count on you to help me save the world.