why to be not the first

To be written:

"Never be first; try to be second".

Now this did not come from me. It came from one of the best brains of the 20th century, someone who was best in his days in both Theoretical and Experimental physics simultaneoulsy,someone who did all the calculations related to the making of the first atomic bomb on his slide rule. He was Enrico Fermi.

Why did he say this then?

Because in science, as in everything else, it has always been risky to be the first in a field, and guys who were the firsts, were never appreciated. What the above quote means in essense is that it's always dangerous to be ahead of one's time. This fact has been proved time and again.

Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the foremost physicists of the 19th century, whose most important contriubtuion is his invention of statistical mechanics, and who is most famous for the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, was also one of the first to recognise the importance of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory.


However, Boltzmann's ideas were not accepted by many scientists. Wilhelm Ostwald led the opposition to Boltzmann's ideas,and many European scientists, who misunderstood them,opposed Boltzman. not fully grasping the statistical nature of his reasoning.
Unfortunately he failed to realise that the new discoveries concerning radiation that he learnt about on this visit were about to prove his theories correct.

Boltzmann continued to defend his belief in atomic structure, but attacks on his work continued. Boltzmann finally felt that his life's work was going to collapse soon.Depressed Boltzmann committed suicide just before experiment verified his work.He hanged himself while his wife and daughter were swimming during a vacation.

to be written more

Fermi quote...

Hoyle.....

Boys. . Pople....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Boltzmann.html