Would be good to see some stories from Asia - the old idea still being out there that 'science' is something Europeans came up with and then disseminated around the world.
There's an interesting generation in Japan, in the late 19th c, when samurai status was abolished and lots of former samurai took up science instead. Including Kikunae Ikeda, who 'discovered' umami, the fifth of our five basic tastes, while enjoying some boiled tofu.
Bletchley Park was all about Turing and Enigma, right? Wrong: Bill Tutte figured out the Lorenz machines and Tommy Flowers built Colossus, the first electronic programmable computer.
The story of how lithium became a mainstream psychiatric medication (and arguably the most effective out of all the other psychiatric medications) would be interesting.
In the 1950s and 60s, it was unclear whether lithium would become the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder that we see today. Many saw it as a toxic substance to be avoided (The FDA banned lithium from 1949 to 1970).
The story centres around a small research team at Aarhus University in Denmark. Led by Mogens Schou, the team showed that lithium was effective as a prophylactic agent (it prevented mania and depressive episodes) and, perhaps more importantly, showed how it could be taken safely.
Amdi Amdisen is the “unsung hero”. Almost no one in psychiatry today knows who he is. But the painstaking unsexy work he did (and others in the group who helped) in the 1970s to scientifically determine how lithium blood levels should be monitored has meant that millions of people around the world can take and benefit from the drug today.
I am biased, though, since I’m trying to spread the word. And will take any opportunity to shamelessly tell his story!
I think that the reason we come up with these narratives is because the human brain loves a good story. Because our brain, by necessity, has to summarise so much sensory data for us as we meander through even the most mundane of tasks, we are hardwired to love a nice simplified flow of events.
This is why so many people flock to demagogues, charlatans and conspiracies.
Great article. In molecular biology I can think of several examples fitting the model of a slow, erratic build up with no particular goal in mind that only fits together retrospectively. One in particular might be the discovery of the mechanism of somatic hypermutation in antibody diversification, which took place over 1990s and early 2000s in Michael Neuberger's group at LMB in Cambridge. There were a few extremely insightful papers, but most of the ground work wasn't directly focussed on the question at all.
The most boring popular science trope is surely "they laughed at Wegener, they're not laughing now". It looks to me as if Wegener was no closer to being right about plate tectonics than Lamarck was to being right about evolution, and we are meant to laugh at Lamarck.
A subsidiary annoyance is this: it's useful to define continents as continents and islands off continents, as islands. The thought police like to insist that the British Isles are geographically "part of Europe". Why? Plate tectonics is not essentially about continents, but the Wegener myth conflates the two. Anyone who wants the British Isles to be "part of Europe" is obliged also to say that Spain and Portugal are part of Africa.
The other awful warning against mythologising science is dear old Stephen Jay Gould. Great writer, especially of Wonderful Life (and I think his contingency argument is spot on, contra claims that convergence would have come to the rescue) but he plainly thought that biology should mimic physics and that as Newton had his Einstein so Darwin should have a greater successor, more - I suspect - because of the narrative arc than because of failings in neo Darwinism.
How about astronomy or physics? I'm actually thinking to write something very brief about James Bradley and post it here on Substack.
The title I want to use:
The name is Bradley… James Bradley, Astronomer Royale
But I don't mind if you want to use it… if you're interested, that is. Anyway, Bradley was indeed (the third) Astronomer Royal, and that puts him squarely in the famous category… or it ought to. But merely googling his name, one finds out he doesn't make any lists of best\top astronomers. This is actually scandalous, because his name deserves to be next Hipparchus and Kepler.
I guess there's a logarithmic scale of fame, and it has no bottom… we only see the tiny fraction at the very top. Bradley would be, I guess, somewhere in the middle upper range, but he's still practically invisible.
Yes. To look at it from a political angle, if you can convince others you're the great man, you get to keep all the goodies - Musk. This logic also means the obverse must be true, 'as the indolent and thick majority are not great men, they deserve nothing'. I wonder why the world is going to hell in a handcart?
I can't think of any stories offhand that you're unlikely to know. But I do like playing about with words and titles. So here's an aunt Sally for you to pull apart:
Progress: a truer, messier history of science and society
What you're saying here is true (and your examples eg re Franklin) are very good. But the "science is made by groups of people not great men" trope has become very boring recently, because a thousand and one people are making the same point in only slightly different ways.
I would like to see a halfway house. Great men (and thankfully now women) really do have an influence. And they are also nothing taken apart from the big social movements that feed their ideas (Darwin being the greatest example of this). How do they come together? How do the big movements form, and are the great men and women that lead them created by the movement, steering the movement, or elevated because the movement needs a figurehead?
Most scientists do terribly conservative, repetitious work that creates nothing. The vast majority. Some groups of scientists get a great idea and run with it. Usually a few great men and women pop out at the front of them. Who drives it? I suspect Crick was a huge driver of the whole start of molecular biology. But I aslo suspect that's unusual...
I recently watched the Netflix movie Joy about IVF, the story of Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy was fascinating and I have tried to learn more of their story.
Would be good to see some stories from Asia - the old idea still being out there that 'science' is something Europeans came up with and then disseminated around the world.
There's an interesting generation in Japan, in the late 19th c, when samurai status was abolished and lots of former samurai took up science instead. Including Kikunae Ikeda, who 'discovered' umami, the fifth of our five basic tastes, while enjoying some boiled tofu.
That's a great idea Chris. Have you written about them or him anywhere? Where do I start?
Modesty almost - but not quite! - forbids. He's one of my chosen 20 here:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/316626/the-japanese-by-harding-christopher/9780141992280
Bletchley Park was all about Turing and Enigma, right? Wrong: Bill Tutte figured out the Lorenz machines and Tommy Flowers built Colossus, the first electronic programmable computer.
The story of how lithium became a mainstream psychiatric medication (and arguably the most effective out of all the other psychiatric medications) would be interesting.
In the 1950s and 60s, it was unclear whether lithium would become the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder that we see today. Many saw it as a toxic substance to be avoided (The FDA banned lithium from 1949 to 1970).
The story centres around a small research team at Aarhus University in Denmark. Led by Mogens Schou, the team showed that lithium was effective as a prophylactic agent (it prevented mania and depressive episodes) and, perhaps more importantly, showed how it could be taken safely.
Amdi Amdisen is the “unsung hero”. Almost no one in psychiatry today knows who he is. But the painstaking unsexy work he did (and others in the group who helped) in the 1970s to scientifically determine how lithium blood levels should be monitored has meant that millions of people around the world can take and benefit from the drug today.
I am biased, though, since I’m trying to spread the word. And will take any opportunity to shamelessly tell his story!
I think that the reason we come up with these narratives is because the human brain loves a good story. Because our brain, by necessity, has to summarise so much sensory data for us as we meander through even the most mundane of tasks, we are hardwired to love a nice simplified flow of events.
This is why so many people flock to demagogues, charlatans and conspiracies.
Great article. In molecular biology I can think of several examples fitting the model of a slow, erratic build up with no particular goal in mind that only fits together retrospectively. One in particular might be the discovery of the mechanism of somatic hypermutation in antibody diversification, which took place over 1990s and early 2000s in Michael Neuberger's group at LMB in Cambridge. There were a few extremely insightful papers, but most of the ground work wasn't directly focussed on the question at all.
Don’t know if you know of it’s existence, but you’ll love (and hate?) this:
https://academictree.org/
An effort to make a geneology of academic mentorship relations, a centuries old clusterf*ck
The most boring popular science trope is surely "they laughed at Wegener, they're not laughing now". It looks to me as if Wegener was no closer to being right about plate tectonics than Lamarck was to being right about evolution, and we are meant to laugh at Lamarck.
A subsidiary annoyance is this: it's useful to define continents as continents and islands off continents, as islands. The thought police like to insist that the British Isles are geographically "part of Europe". Why? Plate tectonics is not essentially about continents, but the Wegener myth conflates the two. Anyone who wants the British Isles to be "part of Europe" is obliged also to say that Spain and Portugal are part of Africa.
The other awful warning against mythologising science is dear old Stephen Jay Gould. Great writer, especially of Wonderful Life (and I think his contingency argument is spot on, contra claims that convergence would have come to the rescue) but he plainly thought that biology should mimic physics and that as Newton had his Einstein so Darwin should have a greater successor, more - I suspect - because of the narrative arc than because of failings in neo Darwinism.
How about astronomy or physics? I'm actually thinking to write something very brief about James Bradley and post it here on Substack.
The title I want to use:
The name is Bradley… James Bradley, Astronomer Royale
But I don't mind if you want to use it… if you're interested, that is. Anyway, Bradley was indeed (the third) Astronomer Royal, and that puts him squarely in the famous category… or it ought to. But merely googling his name, one finds out he doesn't make any lists of best\top astronomers. This is actually scandalous, because his name deserves to be next Hipparchus and Kepler.
I guess there's a logarithmic scale of fame, and it has no bottom… we only see the tiny fraction at the very top. Bradley would be, I guess, somewhere in the middle upper range, but he's still practically invisible.
How about The Science Myth? 😇
(As a bonus, you might get a lot of purchases from anti-vaxxers who’ve only skimmed the blurb)
(One of my rejected titles was actually “Great Men”, which I thought would make a nice contrast with Difficult Women)
Except the doinks wouldn't have got the very obvious irony.
'Men Are Great, Woman Are Difficult' writer Helen Lewis joins us from her husband's home in London, Helen, why are men so much better than women?'
Yes. To look at it from a political angle, if you can convince others you're the great man, you get to keep all the goodies - Musk. This logic also means the obverse must be true, 'as the indolent and thick majority are not great men, they deserve nothing'. I wonder why the world is going to hell in a handcart?
I can't think of any stories offhand that you're unlikely to know. But I do like playing about with words and titles. So here's an aunt Sally for you to pull apart:
Progress: a truer, messier history of science and society
The fact that the first Neanderthal known to have been found wasn't from Neander (and also the general racism around the interpretation of the earliest remains to be recognised) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#:~:text=The%20first%20Neanderthal%20remains%E2%80%94Engis,Grottes%20d%27Engis%2C%20Belgium.
Sounds fascinating. I can’t wait.
What you're saying here is true (and your examples eg re Franklin) are very good. But the "science is made by groups of people not great men" trope has become very boring recently, because a thousand and one people are making the same point in only slightly different ways.
I would like to see a halfway house. Great men (and thankfully now women) really do have an influence. And they are also nothing taken apart from the big social movements that feed their ideas (Darwin being the greatest example of this). How do they come together? How do the big movements form, and are the great men and women that lead them created by the movement, steering the movement, or elevated because the movement needs a figurehead?
Most scientists do terribly conservative, repetitious work that creates nothing. The vast majority. Some groups of scientists get a great idea and run with it. Usually a few great men and women pop out at the front of them. Who drives it? I suspect Crick was a huge driver of the whole start of molecular biology. But I aslo suspect that's unusual...
I recently watched the Netflix movie Joy about IVF, the story of Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy was fascinating and I have tried to learn more of their story.