Albert Einstein : The Imagineer

Albert Einstein is probably the best known scientist of the 20th Century. Most people know of his theory of relativity and that famous little equation E=mc². Yet it's not for this or quantum physics that Einstein inspires me. It was his ability to think outside the square and to apply great creativity and imagination to science. He opened the boundaries of his mind and didn't accept reality as it presented itself.

Albert Einstein may have looked like the stereotypical mad inventor with wild hair and an intense look, but he was not the mono-dimensional scientist which is the other great cliché of science. He was definitely a well rounded individual - he embraced philosophy from an early age and was into art. At university he could be seen hanging out in cafes and bars, discussing physics with other students.

Einstein was a bit of a rebel, and not too good with authority figures. One of his earlier teachers accused him of sitting in the back row and smiling (a familiar sounding accusation - not that I'd want to compare myself with Einstein). He always felt better if he could reject authority rather than it rejecting him. And one or the other happened on many occasions!

Contrary to what many people think, Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project - that infamous undertaking to develop the world's first nuclear weapon. Even back in the 1930s Einstein was well known as a pacifist. He did not work on the Project and he was not present at any nuclear tests. Yet he is linked to the bomb's development - E=mc² was essential to the physics behind the bomb. Einstein also wrote to President Roosevelt to alert him to the possiblity of the development of a nuclear weapon by the Nazis. In any case, his limited association with the development of the atomic bomb was a source of great sadness for Einstein.

Had Einstein wanted to work on the Manhattan Project, he probably would have been prevented because of the fears of the FBI, who by 1940 had a 1500 page dossier on Einstein. Albert Einstein was a member of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence. He had left-wing politics and he was a foreign scientist living in the United States. The FBI, paranoid and searching for communist sympathisers, thought one of the world's greatest minds an "extreme radical" and a security risk.

Interestingly, when he was younger, Einstein thought that he lacked imagination. In high school he wrote - "My disposition for abstract and mathematical thought, [and my] lack of imagination and ability" as his reasons for becoming a teacher in physics and mathematics. Not so later on in life, when Einstein had played with our perception of the world and re-negotiated it, he then said "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world". A poet as well!

Louis Pasteur : The Believer

"Once upon a time in far off France, there lived a man named Louis Pasteur"

That is how the story that was read to me as a young child began. It was about a man named Louis Pasteur who believed in himself and believed in the existence of germs. Because he believed in himself he managed to save the life of a young boy who was bitten by a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth with white froth. Louis knew that there was an invisible enemy and eventually he found it. All because he believed in himself!

This story left a big impression on my young mind, and not just to 'believe in yourself'. It also instilled in me the realisation that not everything is as it seems - just because we can't seen something, doesn't necessarily mean it's not there. I kept hoping that this was true for fairies.

Louis Pasteur did more than find a cure for rabies. He also worked on the problem of beer and wine spoilage in France. Wine and beer went sour as it aged - was there a chemical that could prevent this? Louis was the first to show that fermentation required an organism - yeast, and was not a chemical process.

His solution to the beer and wine problem was pasteurisation. gently heating the wine or beer to a temperature of 120F [in C] to kill off any yeast left. This horrified the French wine makers and beer producers - heating wine? However, Louis proved his point in a cunningly simple experiment. heat one lot of wine and bottle it, and several months later open and compare with the wines which hadn't been heated. Of course, none of the heated bottles were off, while several of the un-heated bottles were.

Not content with guaranteeing a good wine, Louis Pasteur also disproved the theory of spontaneous generation. The general attitude in the 1860s was that life spontaneously generated out of dead matter: flies grew from dead meat, worms from decaying plants. Again, through a simple experiment, Louis proved that spontaneous generation did not occur, because life already existed - as tiny spores of organisms in the air. When deprived of these tiny organisms, meat did not spoil and flies did not rise from dead flesh!

What now? Louis Pasteur next discovered the germ, or more precisely, the 'germ theory of disease', in which diseases are spread between people by microscopic organisms which might be shared through bodily contact, sneezing etc.

This was a phenomenal discovery, though it may seem commonplace to us today. For 19th Century people, the world was suddenly occupied by a flotilla of nasty germs all waiting to do harm. For the first time the nature of infectious diseases and their method of propagation was understood. And understanding something is the first step towards solving it. It was this discovery of life in germland that allowed Pasteur to develop the cure for rabies.

The real story comes to a rather dramatic end. Joseph Meister, the boy whose life Louis Pasteur saved from rabies, became the gatekeeper at the Pasteur Institute. Fifty years after Louis saved his life he died a tragic and ironic death. When the Nazis invaded France, they asked Meister to open Louis Pasteur's crypt, out of curiosity. Rather than desecrate Louis' crypt, Joseph killed himself.

Pasteur made some shattering discoveries that changed the way we see the world. He went out on a limb by believing in something that no-one could see and was prepared to see the world through different eyes.

David Suzuki : A Wise Man

David Suzuki tends towards emphasising the destructive consequences of scientific discovery and the shortcomings of modern science. On the other hand, he is a world-esteemed geneticist with a string of degrees. I like the fact that he has managed to take a look over his shoulder at science, while still keeping his foot in the arena - a kind of self-regulation. I also like the way he emphasises that science can be much more than it is now, rather than simply ruling it as inadequate and missing the point.

David pointed out that scientific analysis tends to look at the world in fragmented pieces. take one aspect of nature, isolate it from everything else, control everything impinging on it and measure everything that happens. From here, add all the isolated snapshots of nature together and what do you get? A fractured mosaic rather than the big picture.

He wrote about the mosaic view of science in his book Inventing the Future (1990) which was full of ideas which reflected my own fledgling thoughts. I admired the way he questioned the infinity of scientific knowledge and recognised that science has a responsibility as well as an important role in the world - that scientific discoveries can have profound social consequences!

Suzuki's personal odyssey towards evaluating the role of science in our society had its beginning in childhood. During the second world war David Suzuki and his family were stripped of all rights of Canadian citizenship for sharing genes with 'the enemy' - despite being 2nd and 3rd generation Canadians! It was also in his childhood that he developed a real love of nature through father-son camping and fishing trips. Lots of fishing trips - the number of pictures of 'David with caught fish' in his autobiography Metamorphosis is amazing.

The college-age David Suzuki planned to take his love of science down the medical path. However, somewhere along the way to medical school, he was seduced by fruit flies and genetics and ended up in the lab. Genetics totally absorbed him and he loved pure research - the lab was his favourite place to be! It was as a grown-up geneticist, that he remembered his childhood experience of being judged because of his genes. He began to assess the impact of genetics on society and then gradually to consider the nature of scientific discovery and the limits of scientific knowledge.

Since then, David Suzuki has gone a step further towards developing a holistic approach to science - acknowledging that science has relegated some aspects of life to the margins of our values and experiences. Big on accountability and responsibility, he has also moved towards the integration of other sources of knowledge with science - from elders and indigenous populations. He is now foremost an environmentalist, and an educator, and has written many books as well as writing newspaper columns, doing radio shows and TV shows. Recently he set up the David Suzuki Foundation as a grass-roots education centre. However, for me his greatest impact has been in not only acknowledging the limits of science but in suggesting that science can also

Dogs set good Example

Great Advice!

Am sure the kids would enjoy reading… lessons from dogs J
If a dog was the teacher you would learn stuff like: When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
When it's in your best interest, practice obedience.
Let others know when they've invaded your territory .
Take naps.
Stretch before rising.
Run, romp, and play daily.
Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass.
On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
No matter how often you're scolded, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout ... run right back and make friends. ! Delight in the simple joy of a long walk. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough. Be loyal! . Never pretend to be something you're not.
If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.