Albert Einstein was more than a 'Genius': Five things you didn't know. Show Caption. Hide Caption. New TV series humanizes Albert Einstein. He relied on others, including his first wife Mileva and his good friend, the physicist Michele Besso, to help him work out thorny problems. Special relativity, general relativity, and the photon model of light might not have been developed by the same individual, but someone would have sussed them out. Nor was Einstein the only physicist to make brilliant discoveries in the early 20th century.
Were they lesser geniuses than Einstein? But of course there are two unfortunate biases against Curie: her gender and the fact that she was an experimentalist, not a theoretician. This difference is instructive. Celebrity, on the other hand, tends to follow more predictable patterns. Once a person becomes famous, they tend to stay that way. But because he lived in a special sliver of time, after the lights of fame had begun to shine bright, and before science came to be seen as a team sport, he has become our genius.
Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings. Nitin K Ahuja. Throughout history women have been denied formal education, deterred from advancing professionally, and under-recognized for their achievements.
Half the women in the Terman study ended up as homemakers. Using fMRI brain scans below , hearing specialist Charles Limb has found that jazz musicians and freestyle rappers suppress the self-monitoring part of their brains as they improvise. Limb plans to use electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure electrical activity in the brains of other creative individuals, including comedians; he tries it out on himself in his lab at UC San Francisco above.
Sometimes, by sheer good fortune, promise and opportunity collide. If there were ever an individual who personified the concept of genius in every aspect, from its ingredients to its far-reaching impact, it would be Leonardo da Vinci. The breadth of his abilities—his artistic insights, his expertise in human anatomy, his prescient engineering—is unparalleled. He persisted no matter the challenge. Two years ago he published preliminary genetic analyses of a Neanderthal skeleton.
It is an ambitious plan, but team members are optimistically laying the groundwork. Art historians and geneticists, including specialists at the institute of genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, are experimenting with techniques to obtain DNA from fragile Renaissance-era paintings and paper.
The quest to unravel the origins of genius may never reach an end point. Like the universe, its mysteries will continue to challenge us, even as we reach for the stars. For some, that is as it should be. All rights reserved. This story appears in the May issue of National Geographic magazine. The Power of Letting Go Using fMRI brain scans below , hearing specialist Charles Limb has found that jazz musicians and freestyle rappers suppress the self-monitoring part of their brains as they improvise.
Photographer Paolo Woods lives in Florence, Italy. This is his first story for the magazine. Find out if you could be related to a genius with the new Geno 2. Share Tweet Email.
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We might not have had the theory of relativity if Pauline wasn't persistent in making her son play the violin. Revealers introduce new ideas and possibilities to their children — things they can learn about, places they can go and people they can be.
They encourage their children to be persistent in finding solutions to problems — and, when doing so, to be "curious, disciplined and and self-reliant. Even though Einstein hated school, his parents knew that it wasn't because he had a learning disability — it was simply because he wasn't learning much at school. Their solution was to create a stimulating learning environment at home, where they provided him with books and toys that supplemented his interests.
As Einstein grew older, his curiosity was further fueled by Thursday lunches at home, where his parents allowed him to sit at the table with family members and scientist friends.
These lunchtime seminars allowed him to interact with worldly adults who challenged him with new ideas and concepts in math, science and technology. It isn't easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one.
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