Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

by Livio, Mario

  “To suppose, as Lyell”: Kelvin 1864.

  the French physicist Joseph Fourier: A good description of the development of the theory of thermal conductivity can be found in Narasimhan 2010.

  Kelvin believed that he could state: Kelvin admitted that “we are very ignorant as to the effects of high temperatures in altering the conductivities and specific heats of rocks, and as to their latent heat of fusions.” These types of uncertainties ended up playing an important role in his blunder.

  Kelvin was able to obtain a rough estimate: This timescale is known today as the Kelvin-Helmholtz timescale.

  “It seems, therefore, on the whole”: Kelvin 1862. Shaviv 2009 presents a very detailed but quite accessible exposition of the theory of stellar structure and evolution.

  Kelvin later described the conversation: Thomson 1899. Chamberlin 1899 presents a commentary on Kelvin’s address in 1899.

  when Kelvin delivered an address: On February 27, 1868; Kelvin 1891–94, vol. 2, p. 10.

  “The earth, if we bore into it”: Kelvin 1891–94, vol. 2, p. 10.

  Since tides caused by the Moon’s: The Earth’s angular velocity in its spin around its axis is higher than the angular velocity of the Moon in its orbit. Consequently, the tidal forces tend to spin the Earth down and to increase the Earth-Moon distance.

  “It is impossible, with the imperfect data”: Kelvin 1868.

  George was a physicist: While in Trinity College in Cambridge, George Darwin (1845–1912) was Second Wrangler and Second Smith’s Prizeman.

  even a solidified Earth was not: Darwin repeated the result of his 1878 letter considering the rigidity of the Earth in his presidential address to the British Association in 1886 (G. H. Darwin 1886), concluding that he saw no right to be “so confident of the internal structure of the earth as to be able to allege that the earth would not through its whole mass adjust itself almost completely to the equilibrium figure.”

  Charles Darwin was delighted: G. H. Darwin in Stratton and Jackson 1907–16, vol. 3, p. 5.

  “We, the geologists [emphasis added], are at fault”: Kelvin 1891–94, vol. 2, p. 304.

  “always felt that this hypothesis”: Kelvin gave his presidential address entitled “On the Origin of Life” at Edinburgh in August 1871. Kelvin 1891–94, vol. 2, p. 132.

  “profoundly convinced that the argument”: Kelvin 1891–94, vol. 2, p. 132.

  started to pay serious attention to Kelvin’s: Burchfield 1990 (especially chapters 3 and 4) provides a comprehensive discussion of Kelvin’s influence and impact.

  He is perhaps best known for his legendary: The event took place during the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its thirtieth annual conference from June 27 to July 4, 1860. The main event on June 30 was a rather long lecture by historian of science John William Draper. Estimates of the attendance (in the Evening Star) put it somewhere between four hundred and seven hundred (issue of July 2). Bishop Wilberforce’s comments following the lecture apparently lasted for about a half hour. He concluded that “Mr. Darwin’s conclusions were an hypothesis, raised most unphilosophically to the dignity of a causal theory” (as reported on July 7 in the Athenaeum). The most thorough analysis of the details of the event is in Jensen 1988. See also Lucas 1979.

  The story was told in colorful: Sidgwick 1898.

  Even though there are many versions: For example, the Press reported on July 7: “[The Bishop] asked the professor [Huxley] whether he would prefer a monkey for his grandfather or his grandmother.” Huxley himself had written to his friend Dr. Frederick Dryster on September 9, 1860: “except indeed the question raised as to my personal predilections in the matter of ancestry . . . If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.” The letter is in The Huxley Papers, 15, 117 (London: Imperial College); it is cited in Foskett 1953.

  Historian of science James Moore: Moore 1979, p. 60.

  “I do not suppose that”: Huxley 1909 [1869], p. 335–36.

  “We find that we may”: Tait 1869.

  to name the ten greatest: The list that appeared in the December 1999 issue of Physics World included, in this order: Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Galileo Galilei, Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, and Ernest Rutherford. Slightly different lists appeared in other polls. (In particular, on several lists, Newton was ranked first, with Einstein second.)

  We know today that the age: See, eg. Dalrymple 2001.

  Chapter 5: Certainty Generally Is Illusion

  “Mathematics may be compared”: Huxley 1909 [1869].

  the engineer John Perry: John Perry (1850–1920) was born in Ireland. After being a professor of mechanical engineering in both the United Kingdom and Japan, he was appointed professor of engineering and mathematics at Finsbury Technical College in London. In 1896 he advanced to a professorship at the Royal College of Science. Throughout his career, Perry introduced novel teaching methods in mathematics and worked on problems of applied electricity. See, eg, Nudds, McMillan, Weaire, and McKenna Lawlor 1988; Armstrong 1920.

  to argue that evolution by natural selection: Salisbury argued that one hundred million years was not sufficient for natural selection to transform jellyfish into humans, and also repeated Kelvin’s objection based on the argument of design. Salisbury 1894. Described also in Shipley 2001.

  Perry wrote to a physicist friend: Perry wrote to Oliver Lodge on October 31, 1894. He added that if natural selection were to be dismissed, the only alternative was to appeal to some providence, and he regarded that as destructive for scientific reasoning. Shipley 2001.

  he diligently sent copies: To physicists Joseph Larmor and George FitzGerald, as well as to Osborne Reynolds and Peter Guthrie Tait. He also wrote to Kelvin on October 17, 1894, and again on October 22 and October 23 (Cambridge University Library, Papers of Lord Kelvin Add. MS. 7342 (P56, P57, P58).

  “I sat beside him”: The dinner took place on October 28, 1894. Perry wrote to Oliver Lodge on October 29 (University College London, Lodge Papers Add. MS. 89).

  The scientific journal Nature eventually published: Perry 1895a.

  In an offensively dismissive letter: An extract from Tait’s letter to Perry is included in Perry 1895a.

  “You say I am right”: Letter of Perry to Tait on November 26, 1894. This letter is also included in Perry 1895a. Perry also noted, “I found that so many of my friends agreed with me.”

  “I should like to have your”: Letter of Tait to Perry on November 27, 1894 (Cambridge University Library, Papers of Lord Kelvin, Add. MS. 7342, P59d). Included in Perry 1895a.

  “It is for Lord Kelvin to prove”: Letter of Perry to Tait on November 29, 1894. Included in Perry 1895a. Perry emphasized two arguments in his letter: (1) that there was a certain amount of fluidity inside the Earth, so that heat could be transported by convection, and (2) that according to results by Robert Weber, the conductivity of rocks increased with increasing temperature. Later, the latter turned out to be wrong.

  “I feel that we cannot assume”: Letter from Kelvin to Perry on December 13, 1894. Included in Perry 1895a, p. 227. Kelvin was interested in particular in checking Weber’s results on the conductivity.

  “refusing sunlight for more”: Kelvin to Perry on December 13, 1894. Included in Perry 1895a.

  Perry’s challenge caused: On his part, Perry asked for the assistance of mathematician Oliver Heaviside, and he published a more sophisticated mathematical analysis of the problem; Perry 1895b.

  The overjoyed Kelvin published: Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 1895, Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Murray 1895. Kelvin based his conclusions also on measurements of the melting point of diabase, a basalt, by geologist Carl Bakus.

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p; Perry concluded his last: Perry 1895c. The entire debate is described in detail in Shipley 2001 and Burchfield 1990.

  The phenomenon became known as radioactivity: The discovery of radioactivity is in Becquerel 1896; the discovery that heat is produced is in Curie and Laborde 1903.

  It took the amateur astronomer: Wilson 1903. His letter to the editor was only fifteen lines in length.

  did not escape George Darwin: Darwin 1903. He speculated that Kelvin’s estimated age could be increased by a factor of ten or twenty.

  The Irish physicist and geologist: Joly 1903.

  New Zealand–born physicist Ernest Rutherford: A good biography of Rutherford and a description of his work is Eve 1939.

  Kelvin showed great interest: He discussed it in a letter to the English physicist Lord Rayleigh on August 24, 1903, and also with Rutherford himself and with Pierre and Marie Curie on their visit to England.

  “I venture to suggest that somehow”: Kelvin 1904.

  In 1904, however, with considerable: Physicist and Nobel laureate Sir Joseph John “J. J.” Thomson (not related to Lord Kelvin), who discovered the electron, reminisced in 1936 that Kelvin acknowledged in a conversation that the discovery of radioactive heating undermined his assumptions in the calculation of the Earth’s age; Thomson 1936, p. 420. Kelvin made a similar concession during the British Association meeting; Eve 1939, p. 109.

  In an acerbic exchange: It started with a letter by Kelvin, published on August 9, 1906, in which he repeated his belief that the Sun’s energy was only gravitational and asserted that radioactivity was no more than a hypothesis. Various rebuttal letters by Frederick Soddy, Oliver Lodge, Robert John Strutt (physicist and son of Lord Rayleigh), and Kelvin appeared for about a month. In his letter of August 15, Lodge said about Kelvin that “his brilliantly original mind has not always submitted patiently to the task of assimilating the work of others by the process of reading.” The episode is described briefly in Eve 1939, pp. 140–41, Burchfield 1990, p. 165, and Lindley 2004, p. 303. A review of the controversy is in Soddy 1906.

  I came into the room: Cited, eg, in Eve 1939, p. 107.

  Eventually, radiometric dating: Holmes 1947 gives a nice review. Today’s accepted age was first determined by geochemist Clair Patterson by using data from the Canyon Diablo meteorite (Patterson 1956). Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have put radiometric dating to another interesting use. Using the decay of the rare isotope krypton 81, they succeeded in 2011 in tracking the ancient Nubian Aquifer that stretches across northern Africa.

  Rutherford was walking on campus: Eve 1939, p. 107.

  Geologists Philip England, Peter Molnar: England, Molnar, and Richter 2007; Richter 1986.

  The theory of cognitive dissonance: The classical text is Festinger 1957. More recent studies have revealed complex details, both in the psychological and neuroscience arenas; eg, Cooper and Fazio 1984, vol. 17, p. 229; Lee and Schwartz 2010; Van Overwalle and Jordens 2002; Van Veen et al. 2009.

  The messianic stream within the Jewish: Interesting descriptions and an analysis of the events surrounding Schneerson’s death can be found in Ochs 2005 and Dein 2001.

  An experiment conducted in 1955: Brehm 1956.

  Already in the 1950s, researchers: Olds and Milner 1954; Olds 1956 is a popular version.

  Studies showed that an important part: There have been many studies of positive affective reactions and of addictions. See, eg, Bozarth 1994; Fiorino, Coury, and Phillips 1997; Berridge 2003; and Wise 1998. A popular-science account is Nestler and Malenka 2004, and very accessible popular books on the experience of pleasure are Linden 2011 and Bloom 2010.

  Neuroscientist and author Robert Burton suggested specifically: Burton 2008, pp. 99–100, and p. 218.

  is not associated with neural activity: Motivated reasoning implies an emotion regulation. The studies suggest that motivated reasoning is qualitatively different from reasoning when people do not have a strong emotional stake in the results. An extensive review on motivated reasoning is Kunda 1990. The involvement of emotion in decision making is discussed, eg, in Bechara, Damasio, and Damasio 2000. A popular account is Coleman 1995. Westen et al. 2006 present the fMRI studies.

  “The concordance of results”: King 1893.

  his objection to revising: A good discussion of the importance of Kelvin’s estimate for the age of the Sun is in Stacey 2000.

  In August 1920: I discuss the problem of the generation of energy in stars in chapter 8.

  “With respect to the lapse of time”: Darwin inserted this sentence in the sixth edition; Peckham 1959, p. 728.

  Chapter 6: Interpreter of Life

  The lecture hall in the Kerckhoff: Hager 1995, p. 374, gives a nice description of the event.

  Watson was visiting the Swiss: Watson was on his way back from Naples to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a postdoctoral fellow, and he stopped in Geneva.

  had made it even into the pages: “Chemists Solve a Great Mystery: Protein Structure Is Determined,” Life, September 24, 1951, pp. 77–78.

  Pauling started to think about proteins: There are quite a few biographies of Pauling. I found the following particularly helpful: Hager 1995; Serafini 1989; Goertzel and Goertzel 1995; and Marinacci 1995. A number of books cover various aspects of Pauling’s work excellently. Among them I would like to mention Olby 1974; Lightman 2005; Judson 1996; and, of course, the fantastic website at Oregon State University: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections//coll/pauling.

  His first papers on the subject: Pauling 1935; Pauling and Coryell 1936. Pauling and chemist Charles D. Coryell performed the experiment by suspending between the poles of a large magnet a tube of cow blood; Judson 1996, pp. 501–2, gives a good description.

  Alfred Mirsky, a leading protein expert: Pauling did not have much expertise with protein molecules, so he convinced Mirsky, who was at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, to come to Caltech for the 1935–36 year. (He also convinced the Rockefeller Institute’s president to allow Mirsky to leave!)

  Mirsky and Pauling first proposed: Mirsky and Pauling 1936. Some earlier work was done by Hsien Wu in 1931.

  is composed of chains: Very significantly for Pauling’s subsequent work, the authors noted that “this chain is folded into a uniquely defined configuration, in which it is held by hydrogen bonds.” Hydrogen bonds—where the hydrogen is held jointly by two atoms, effectively creating a bridge between them—were about to become Pauling’s trademark.

  obtained by the physicist William Astbury: Astbury 1936.

  Pauling immersed himself in the work: Pauling described his activities at the time in a dictation given in 1982. The transcription was published by Pauling’s assistant, Dorothy Munro; Pauling 1996.

  Figure 11 shows a schematic drawing: Pauling’s original piece of paper, on which he sketched the structure and then folded it, in 1948, was never discovered.

  Pauling convinced Robert Corey: Corey had considerable experience with X-ray studies of proteins already. Many years later, Pauling commented graciously that it may actually have been Corey who convinced him.

  “In the spring of 1948”: Pauling 1996. I should note that in an earlier account, Pauling 1955, Pauling says that he found only one of the two helices in Oxford, while the other was discovered by Herman Branson when Pauling returned to Caltech.

  Pauling created a helix: Olby 1974, p. 278, gives an excellent, if somewhat technical, description of the road to the alpha-helix.

  “They have about five times”: Pauling wrote to chemist and crystallographer Edward Hughes. Cited on The Pauling Blog website, under “An Era of Discovery in Protein Structure.”

  Even during a discussion with the famous: Pauling admitted in later interviews that he had been concerned that the Cavendish group might beat him to the punch in checking the models. Olby 1974, p. 281; Hager 1995, p. 330.

  whether Branson could find: According to Pauling 1955, Branson may have found only one of the two helices, after Pauling expl
ained to him all the important constraints involved. In Pauling 1996, he gives the impression that he (Pauling) had discovered both helices in Oxford and that Branson later confirmed them.

  “Polypeptide Chain Configurations”: Bragg, Kendrew, and Perutz 1950.

  The idea behind X-ray crystallography: Good descriptions of the technique itself and its applications can be found, eg, in McPherson 2003. An outline containing less physics is Blow 2002.

  “Proteins are built of long chains”: Bragg, Kendrew, and Perutz 1950.

  Bragg hammered nails: Perutz 1987.

  Pauling was always extremely competitive: Alex Rich, Jack Dunitz, and Horace Freeland Judson all confirmed this fact in conversations with the author.

  he and Corey sent a short note: Pauling and Corey 1950.

  that contained a detailed explanation: Pauling, Corey, and Branson 1951. Somewhat sadly, Branson wrote a letter in 1984 to Pauling’s biographers Ted and Ben Goertzel, alleging that it was he, and not Pauling, who had “found two spiral structures which fit all the data.” In 1995 he added that Corey had nothing to do with the discovery (Goertzel and Goertzel 1995, pp. 95–98). These allegations are inconsistent with the recollections of a number of other scientists, who remembered Pauling’s models from Oxford, and also inconsistent with the fact that Branson had agreed to be third author on the paper. Branson himself did note that Pauling was “one of the impressive scientific intellects of our age who deserves the Nobel Prizes.”

  that he thought that the word “spiral”: Dunitz, in a conversation with the author on November 23, 2010.

  “I was thunderstruck by Pauling”: Perutz 1987.

  He was one of the first scientists: A concise summary of Pauling’s achievements is Dunitz 1991.

  “To understand all these great biological”: Pauling 1948a.

  “I believe that as the methods”: Pauling 1939, p. 265.

  Even the space-filling colored models: Francoeur 2001, p. 95. See also Nye 2001, p. 117.

  “The Gregorian monk Mendel”: Pauling 1948b.