Remembering Zwicky

[BaalChatzaf]

Harry Lymes was wrong.  Switzerland produced more than the coo coo clock.  It produced Fritz Swicky an under appreciated genius who among other things discovered "Dark Matter".  More important than  his scientific  break through ideas was is position that the value of individual researchers and thinkers has become undervalued.  People believe no one can make progress without gigantic Federal and Corporate grants.  Not Zwicky.

Please read:  http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/greenstein.pdf

Six pages and worth the time spent reading it.

Here is what he had to say about individual accomplishment:

If a single theme dominates Zwicky's humanistic writings, it is the importance of unfettered individual creativity and effort. This viewpoint may not be shared by those who feel everything worthwhile that remains to be discovered or developed will require sizable federal appropriations. Zwicky briefly went the grant and contract route but decided that the loss of the essence of creativity that was implicit in the federal funding system precluded its ever leading to any really basic discoveries. He returned to his original premise: The world's hopes lie in individual free agents, men and women of good will who can come together and work when the need be, but who form no permanent organizations or institutions. One might wonder why a person of Zwicky's creative stature never attracted large numbers of followers. Discipleship was inconsistent with Zwicky's basic views. He held that everyone was a genius and that each person's life task was to find his own genius, not to follow some other genius. "Most individuals just never seem to realize that they possess unique potentialities and capabilities not to be matched by anybody else and that the penalty for not realizing one's genius is frustration and unhappiness."