Three hiatus effect geniuses: Newton (2-yrs), Goethe (1-yr), and Rankine (6-yrs), each of whom entered a period of "forced" convalescence prior to their rise to genius-stature fame; two of which, Newton and Goethe, found the idea seeds of their greatest contributions in those convalescence windows. |
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”— Ferris (1986), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anyone can we find joy in scientific endeavor.”— Albert Einstein (1951), reply letter to female student thinking about becoming a professional astronomer (24 Mar)
Mehdi Bazargan (1907-1995) | Libb Thims (c.1975-) | |
Three of the biggest geniuses of human thermodynamics: Henderson, Bazargan, and Thims, all produced the fruit of their work owing to, in part, the hiatus effect phenomenon. |
“Pareto’s influence had reached Harvard through a strange accident: Professor L.J. Henderson, who may be remembered longer for his Fitness of the Environment than for his pioneering work in the chemistry of blood, had ulcers. In the middle or late twenties he was recovering from an attack in a hospital in his beloved Paris, when his friend William Wheeler, the entomologist, brought him a copy of Pareto’s Traite. Henderson read it with complete absorption during the rest of his stay in the hospital and on the voyage back to America, and he returned to Cambridge a dedicated convert.”
“I, too, was originally supposed to become an engineer. But I found the idea intolerable of having to apply the inventive faculty to matters that make everyday life more elaborate—and all, just for dreary money-making. Thinking for its own sake, as in music! … When I have no special problem to occupy my mind, I love to reconstruct proofs of mathematical and physical theorems that have long been known to me. There is no goal in this, merely an opportunity to indulge in the pleasant occupation of thinking.”— Albert Einstein (1918), Letter to Heinrich Zangger