Concluding Remarks

Abstract

As indicated in the Preface, this book was intended to cover aspects of both science and science personalities, or as the title says: Discoveries and discoverers. Naturally, each personal story is entirely different from the next. Also, we have to bear in mind the conditions under which the scientists grew up. For most of them this was before and during World War 2. Technology was an inspiration for several of them. The most advanced technologies developed during that period were the radio, radar and the nuclear bomb. Some were motivated to study electrical engineering through the prospect of communicating with the world far away. Most likely the future possibilities promised by the invention of the transistor also played an important role. Reaching out globally by radio waves was a fascinating promise. None of them mentioned nuclear physics as a motivation for their original interest in science. Yet, one of them seemed to have wanted to work on the bomb if allowed, another was a co-inventor of the first fully “successful” hydrogen bomb, a fact he did not mention in the interview since we were discussing superconductivity.