Science: January 2009 Archives

“It’s not hard to understand that these people tend to be smarter than the rest of us, and thus tend to come up with a disproportionate share of the Big Ideas. The mystery is why, every now and again, one of these people seems to get a hot hand.” In Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, the “hot hand” in question is that of Joseph Priestley. Something of a forgotten man now (certainly in terms of his role in the American Revolution), Priestley......