Homo Scientificus According to Beckett
One of the truly profound essays I have read in my life.
http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~tobi/fun/max/delbruckHomoScientificusBecket1972.pdf
It has been over 35 years since I first read this essay by Max Delbrück, and it still inspires me and haunts me today.
What is the nature of the scientific mind? What drives a scientist?
Delbrück was a German-American biophysicist. He won the Nobel prize for discovering that bacteria become resistant to viruses (phages) as a result of genetic mutations.
In a recent article in Scientific American; The Right Way to Get It Wrong, it mentions Delbrück, along with Neils Bohr and Enrico Fermi, as scientists who have made spectacular mistakes that have driven science forward. Quote:
"In the 1940s Max Delbrück, the key founder of molecular biology, based his research on a number of incorrect and misleading assumptions. He would go on to win a Nobel Prize."
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