The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do, read an Apple ad.
Read: We have tech to destroy world, but nothing to prevent it, warns Stephen Hawking
Adam chose the apple over Eden for a reason. Without the apple, the world wouldn't be the same.
Apples can topple world orders, drive innovation (just look at a Macintosh) and keep doctors at bay.
Today is the birthday of a man who singlehandedly changed the world. And guess what the driving force was: an apple.
As we celebrate Sir Isaac Newton's genius, let's take a look at the eccentric side of five physicists who changed the world. Here's to the crazy ones:
Sir Isaac Newton
First, the man himself. The force behind the classical mechanics had his fair share of eccentricities. Newton best demonstrated the third law of motion over his fight with Gottfried Leibniz, in what was later called Calculus wars. The English physicist's rivalries with Robert Hooke and Christian Huygens over the nature of light are stuff of legend. Moreover, Newton's apocalypse predictions and occult studies made him a favourite topic of conspiracy theorists. Be that as it may, he changed the course of history and introduced classical mechanics to the world. And hey it's his birthday, so let's cut him some slack.
Albert Einstein
The best thing since Newton. Undoubtedly, one of the most recognised faces around the world, Einstein launched modern physics with his revolutionary paper on Theory of Relativity. He did physics in his spare time while working as a clerk in a Swiss office before making it big, and boy wasn't he ambitious. He dined with presidents, collaborated with mad geniuses from around the world and wrote the most beautiful poem ever - E = mc squared. And for a scientist of his stature, Einstein believed in god. His quest for a unified theory had its basis on his belief in god as underlined by his famous quip on Quantum theory: God doesn't play dice. But that's just a tip of the crazy iceberg.
Einstein had his eyes not just on the curves of space-time; he was an out and out ladies' man. He also married his cousin. Einstein suffered from a speech impediment till he was nine and flunked his college entrance test, but that didn't stop him from coming up with wacky thought experiments to explain the paradoxical nature of time and space. The picture of Einstein with his white, frazzled hair and tongue sticking out came to define the stereotype of 'mad scientist'.
Neils Bohr
The perfect antidote to Einstein. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by Neils Bohr and co. is counter-intuitive as it comes. The strange phenomenon where the observer himself becomes the experiment railed many a physicists at the time and also prompted Einstein to take potshots at him with his 'dice' statement. His repartee was classic: Don't tell god what to do. Bohr made the crazy list purely on the basis of his contributions to the bizarre world of quantum physics.
Nikola Tesla
Tesla was in love with a pigeon. Yes, you read it right. And it didn't stop there; he also believed his feelings were reciprocated. Tesla also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder of the first order. An inventor par excellence, he could rival Edison on the invention front, so much so, that the world's foremost innovative company is named after him. For a man who thrived in the dynamics of electric current, he spent oodles of time generating high voltage lightning. Normal rules didn't apply to him. He spoke ill of dead (launched a tirade on Edison upon his death), had a strange obsession with number 3 and believed in aliens. On a serious note, Tesla was the real inventor of radio, but Marconi beat him into taking a patent and landing a Nobel for the invention.
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski
If building a single-airplane engine from scratch at the age of 14 isn't crazy, I don't know what is. Meet Sabrina, a 22-year-old MIT student, and the latest sensation in physics. Already, the headhunters of Amazon's Blue origin and NASA are after this physics girl, hailed as the next Einstein. As Sheldon Cooper will say, Sabrina is bent on tearing the mask off nature and stare at the face of god. And like Sheldon, she doesn't smoke or drink. Scientists like Stephen Hawking have cited her in his papers. Her work on gravity has already taken the world of science by storm. If she keeps at it, who knows, maybe her name will be mentioned in the same breath as Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel. Sabrina doesn't have a Facebook or Instagram account, but you can check her out at www.physicsgirl.com.
