homeWelcome, sign in or click here to subscribe.login
     


 

 

News


Subscriber content preview

January 17, 2014

Strange But True!

Q. Failures can be ranked from the everyday personal variety — like getting an “F” on a math test — to the larger more historic ones. Can you cite some of the latter type?

A. 1. After Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite and a newspaper dubbing him the “merchant of death,” he felt like a failure, says Jonathan Keats in Discover magazine. Yet he went on to establish Nobel Prizes in peace, literature and the sciences. Interestingly, “only one scientist has won a Nobel for failing”: Albert Michelson, who searched for the “luminiferous ether” that scientists believed was the carrier of light. He couldn't find it and it took Albert Einstein to finally explain why.


 
. . .


To read this story in full login or purchase a subscription.



Previous columns:



Email or user name:
Password:
 
Forgot password? Click here.