Men of Science 185
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Men Of Science
My choice of Men of Science, like that of the men of literature, may seem capricious. They were both governed to some extent by similar considerations, and therefore the preface to my last chapter is in a great degree applicable to this. There is yet another special difficulty in the selection of a satisfactory first-class of scientific men.
The fact of a person's name being associated with some one striking scientific discovery helps enormously, but often unduly, to prolong his reputation to after ages. It is notorious that the same discovery is frequently made simultaneously and quite independently, by different persons. Thus, to speak of only a few cases in late years, the discoveries of photography, of electric telegraphy, and of the planet Neptune through theoretical calculations, have all their rival claimants. It would seem, that discoveries are usually made when the time is ripe for them - that is to say, when the ideas from which they naturally flow are fermenting in the minds of many men. When apples are ripe, a trifling event suffices to decide, which of them shall first drop off its stalk; so a small accident will often determine the scientific man who shall first make and publish a new discovery. There are many persons who have contributed vast numbers of original memoirs, all of them of some, many of great, but none of them extraordinary importance. These men have the capacity of making a striking discovery, though they had not the luck to do so. Their work is invaluable, and remains, but the worker is forgotten. Nay, some eminently scientific
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