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ISBN 0-471-41431-X
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents
Introduction 1
chapter 1
Gregor Johann Mendel • The Father of Genetics 5
chapter 2
David H. Levy • Comet Hunter 27
chapter 3
Henrietta Swan Leavitt • Cepheid Star Decoder 53
chapter 4
Joseph Priestley • Discoverer of Oxygen 73
chapter 5
Michael Faraday • Electromagnetic Lawgiver 93
chapter 6
Grote Reber • Father of Radio Astronomy 117
chapter 7
Arthur C. Clarke • Communications Satellite Visionary 141
chapter 8
Thomas Jefferson • First Modern Archaeologist 163
chapter 9
Susan Hendrickson • Dinosaur Hunter 181
chapter 10
Felix d’Herelle • Bacteriophages Discoverer 203
Index 223
INTRODUCTION
Amateur is a word whose meaning can shift according to context.
In sports, for example, it is used to designate a person who
competes just for the love of it, without getting paid. Olympic
figure skaters originally were not allowed to earn any money
from competing or performing in non-Olympic years, but that
distinction was almost completely eroded during the last two
decades of the twentieth century. Actors, on the other hand, are
divided into amateur and professional categories on the basis of
whether or not they belong to a union, a requirement for working
professionally, but even an amateur actor can earn a living by
performing only at summer theaters and dinner theaters that do
not have union contracts. In the world of science, however, people
are regarded as amateurs because they have not been professionally
trained in a given discipline at an academic institution.
If you do not have a degree, and usually an advanced degree,
establishment scientists will regard you as an amateur.
In the modern world, you can still be regarded as an amateur
in one scientific discipline even though you’ve won a Nobel Prize
in another. A case in point is Luis Alvarez, who won the 1968
Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on elementary particles. Ten
years later, he joined forces with his son Walter, a geologist, to
postulate the theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs had
been caused by a massive asteroid colliding with Earth. Many
scientists initially scoffed at this theory, and the fact that Luis
Alvarez was working in a field for which he had not been formally
trained increased the level of skepticism. The theory was
eventually accepted, on the basis of scientific evidence concerning
high iridium levels in the geological strata at the presumed time
of impact, 65 million years ago, as well as the discovery of an
immense undersea crater off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Despite the annoyance Alvarez created among geologists
and astronomers by meddling in their disciplines, however, he
cannot be considered an amateur scientist in the sense that the
main subjects of this book are. You will meet him here, briefly,
in a surprising context, but the main subject of that chapter is
Arthur C. Clarke, now one of the most famous of all science fiction
writers, but then a young man without a college degree
serving in the radar division of the Royal Air Force. Clarke
wrote a short technical paper in 1945 that drew on several fields
in which he had educated himself. Ignored at the time, the ideas
set forth in that paper would eventually lead to a communications
revolution. Clarke did go on to get a college degree after
the war, but when he wrote this paper he was unquestionably an
amateur. That was one reason why it was dismissed as “science
fiction” by the few professionals who read it at the time.
Such dismissal is a common theme for the remarkable men
and women whose stories are told in this book. Their ideas were
ahead of their time, and they came from individuals who had no
“credentials.” In some cases, it is difficult to fault the professionals
for failing to see the importance of such work. Who, in the
1860s, would have expected that an obscure monk, who could
not pass the tests necessary for certification as a high school
teacher, would be able to lay the foundations of a scientific discipline
that would become one of the most important of the
next century? But that is what Gregor Mendel achieved, planting
generations of peas in a monastery garden, and analyzing the
results in a way that would provide the basis for the science of
genetics.
Mendel, of course, is now studied in high school and college
biology courses. So is Michael Faraday, whose work on electromagnetism
and electrolysis was crucial to a wide range of later
scientific breakthroughs. Yet the drama of Faraday’s extraordinary
rise from uneducated London paperboy to the pinnacle of
nineteenth-century British science is far less known than it
should be. Others you will meet in this book are still little
known to the general public. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, for example,
one of several women known as “computers” who sorted
astronomical plates at the Harvard College Observatory at the
turn of the twentieth century, made a discovery about Cepheid
stars that led to Edwin Hubble’s proof that there were untold
numbers of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Sitting at a
desk in a crowded room, she provided a fundamental clue to the
vastness of the universe. Grote Reber explored the universe from
his own backyard in Wheaton, Illinois, where he built the first
radio telescope in the 1930s. A self-taught French-Canadian bacteriologist,
Felix d’Herelle, discovered and named bacteriophages
in 1917 and set in motion the lines of inquiry that would lead
directly to the revelation of the structure of DNA.
Some readers may be surprised to see the name of Thomas
Jefferson here. Yet quite aside from his enormous political influence
and architectural accomplishments, Jefferson was very
much an amateur scientist. In his spare time he managed to
carry out the first scientific archaeological excavation, using
methods that are now standard in the field. Like Joseph Priestley,
the dissident British clergyman who discovered oxygen, Jefferson’s
curiosity about the world led him in unexpected directions.
Indeed, all the amateur scientists in this book share a great intellectual
curiosity. What are those fumes from the brewery next
door? What are those clear spots that keep showing up in cultures
of bacteria? How could television signals be sent around
the world? Does the static emanating from space mean anything?
Curiosity is the hallmark of the amateur scientist. Professional
scientists are curious, too, of course, but they have been
trained to channel their curiosity in particular ways. In the history
of science, the curiosity of amateurs has often been more
diffuse, even wayward, but it sometimes produces results that
leave the professionals in awe, and at other times provides the
basis for an altogether new scientific discipline.
The very word scientist is relatively new. Until the end of the
eighteenth century, people who investigated what things were
made of and how things worked were called natural philosophers.
Prior to the nineteenth century, most scientists were in a sense
amateurs, although some were far more educated than others.
During the twentieth century, the scientific disciplines became
so sophisticated that most of them left little room for amateurism.
No one can expect to develop new theories involving
quantum physics without a great deal of professional training.
Yet there are still a few areas in which amateur scientists can
make a name for themselves. You will find the stories of two
such individuals here: David Levy, the famous comet hunter,
and Susan Hendrickson, a woman of immense curiosity who
learned an entirely new discipline and discovered the most complete
Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever found. David Levy graduated
from college, but never took an astronomy course. Susan Hendrickson
never even attended college. Amateurs can still accomplish
extraordinary things, even in the specialized technological
world we now inhabit.
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