- Email: [email protected]
Being First
BRUCE J. HILLMAN, MD
EDITORIAL
Being First A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot. —Albert Einstein Virtually everyone has heard of Albert Einstein, to the point that calling someone an “Einstein” has become synonymous with intellectual accomplishment. Why is that? Why has that one man been singled out from the multitude of brilliant women and men, who achieved much, but whose repute has faded with time? Why does calling someone an Einstein, even mockingly, still imply genius, while the memory of other great minds is relegated to academics’ mining minutiae for academic articles that few will ever read? Intuitively, you might think it’s because of continuing interest in his greatest scientific work. That’s unlikely. Even if we were to restrict our survey sample to a highly educated stratum like, say. ummm.radiologists, not many of our colleagues would have much cogent to say about either the general or special theory of relativity. In fact, I’ll cop to being among the clueless, myself. How about the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize?1 Still clueless. 1
There was sufficient controversy that Einstein’s Nobel Prize was not voted on until 1922 and not officially accepted until 1923.
To me, the brilliance of Einstein’s science is an essential element but not entirely sufficient to explain the man’s enduring fame. Rather, Einstein’s contemporary renown is the product of an extraordinary confluence of traits in a single individual: original thinking, great wit, a series of courageous moral stances, an interesting but certainly not particularly handsome face, and his having been a pivotal figure during the remarkably dramatic events of the first half of the 20th century (two world wars, genocide on an unthinkable scale, and a depression). It wasn’t just that he produced great science but that he took such joy in his discoveries. He had an unusual talent for humor, especially given that English was not his native tongue. By leavening his nearly impenetrable mathematical proofs with humor and designing understandable thought experiments, he always had something quotable to say. I can almost hear some impatient readers asking themselves why they are reading this gibberish and what this has to do with health care. Doubtlessly, the barely audible slurping sound I hear is these readers’ moistening their index fingers on their tongues to get enough traction to turn the page. Bear with me. I’m taking the long road to making a point about the pleasure of being the first to know something,
the first to have an original idea, the first to witness a phenomenon and recognize it for what it is. Those who have experienced it will recognize the moment for what it is: an instant of pure joy. Who hasn’t seen the portrait of Einstein sticking out his tongue, or the one with his hair springing wildly about his head like the “do” of some maladapted Cabbage Patch Kid? What precipitated such moments of childlike playfulness? I don’t know for sure, but I’d be willing to give odds that each of these photos and similar moments not photographically captured celebrate some instant of epiphany. Having developed a hypothesis on no provable premise, I’m finally ready to make my point. Although few, if any, of us are actually Einstein’s, the joy of being the first to recognize something new is not beyond our reach. It happens every day. I know this for a fact. It is evident in the substantial number of submissions to JACR that present original thoughts or reconsider old ideas in such a way as to bring to life previously unappreciated concepts. That such originality persists unabated in our specialty gives me great confidence that the concatenation of problems so frequently addressed in the pages of JACR will be resolved. Now, if someone could just explain to me that pesky theory of relativity.
Bruce J. Hillman, MD, UVA-Radiology Research, Box 801339, Charlottesville, VA 22908; e-mail: [email protected].
ª 2014 American College of Radiology 1546-1440/14/$36.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jacr.2014.03.004
1
EDITORIAL
Being First A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot. —Albert Einstein Virtually everyone has heard of Albert Einstein, to the point that calling someone an “Einstein” has become synonymous with intellectual accomplishment. Why is that? Why has that one man been singled out from the multitude of brilliant women and men, who achieved much, but whose repute has faded with time? Why does calling someone an Einstein, even mockingly, still imply genius, while the memory of other great minds is relegated to academics’ mining minutiae for academic articles that few will ever read? Intuitively, you might think it’s because of continuing interest in his greatest scientific work. That’s unlikely. Even if we were to restrict our survey sample to a highly educated stratum like, say. ummm.radiologists, not many of our colleagues would have much cogent to say about either the general or special theory of relativity. In fact, I’ll cop to being among the clueless, myself. How about the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize?1 Still clueless. 1
There was sufficient controversy that Einstein’s Nobel Prize was not voted on until 1922 and not officially accepted until 1923.
To me, the brilliance of Einstein’s science is an essential element but not entirely sufficient to explain the man’s enduring fame. Rather, Einstein’s contemporary renown is the product of an extraordinary confluence of traits in a single individual: original thinking, great wit, a series of courageous moral stances, an interesting but certainly not particularly handsome face, and his having been a pivotal figure during the remarkably dramatic events of the first half of the 20th century (two world wars, genocide on an unthinkable scale, and a depression). It wasn’t just that he produced great science but that he took such joy in his discoveries. He had an unusual talent for humor, especially given that English was not his native tongue. By leavening his nearly impenetrable mathematical proofs with humor and designing understandable thought experiments, he always had something quotable to say. I can almost hear some impatient readers asking themselves why they are reading this gibberish and what this has to do with health care. Doubtlessly, the barely audible slurping sound I hear is these readers’ moistening their index fingers on their tongues to get enough traction to turn the page. Bear with me. I’m taking the long road to making a point about the pleasure of being the first to know something,
the first to have an original idea, the first to witness a phenomenon and recognize it for what it is. Those who have experienced it will recognize the moment for what it is: an instant of pure joy. Who hasn’t seen the portrait of Einstein sticking out his tongue, or the one with his hair springing wildly about his head like the “do” of some maladapted Cabbage Patch Kid? What precipitated such moments of childlike playfulness? I don’t know for sure, but I’d be willing to give odds that each of these photos and similar moments not photographically captured celebrate some instant of epiphany. Having developed a hypothesis on no provable premise, I’m finally ready to make my point. Although few, if any, of us are actually Einstein’s, the joy of being the first to recognize something new is not beyond our reach. It happens every day. I know this for a fact. It is evident in the substantial number of submissions to JACR that present original thoughts or reconsider old ideas in such a way as to bring to life previously unappreciated concepts. That such originality persists unabated in our specialty gives me great confidence that the concatenation of problems so frequently addressed in the pages of JACR will be resolved. Now, if someone could just explain to me that pesky theory of relativity.
Bruce J. Hillman, MD, UVA-Radiology Research, Box 801339, Charlottesville, VA 22908; e-mail: [email protected].
ª 2014 American College of Radiology 1546-1440/14/$36.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jacr.2014.03.004
1