As we see, three out of four, or 75%, lost a parent in early life. And although Sanger did not experience an early parental death [EPD], his maternal grandfather was a wealth cotton manufacturer giving him a great deal of financial freedom. Other originators including: Nicholas Copernicus, Willard Gibbs, and James Maxwell had similarly enriched financial environments. Also of interest, is that John Bardeen was changed from 3rd to 7th grade because his teacher perceived him to be bored in class. He then entered the University of Wisconsin’s engineering program at the young age of 15. Such an uprooting tends to throw one into a solo position in life, whereby one is forced to uniquely stabilize upon one’s own intuition and self-dependence regarding conceptual knowledge. This in many cases leads to ‘original thought’.
We can explain superficially the connection between early parental death [EPD], financial-freedom, grade-changing, and dual-Nobel Prize wins by postulating that such events are prime examples of what we might call cleavage de-bonding events. Those previously ‘normally’ attached, i.e. bonded to mainstream progression of life, human-molecules, like John Bardeen, become suddenly ripped from the normal attachments of human life, so to become a sort of ‘free-floating’ molecule, where decision-making processes become solely dependent upon one’s own intuition and intellect. This, we hypothesize, results in the development of ‘original thought’ being based on the absolute latest sensory input/output collection processes.
For example, Albert Einstein [1879-1955], the 1921 Nobel Prize winner [physics], was a self-confessed ‘lone traveler’, i.e. a free floating human molecule [2]. By age 12, Einstein had decided to devote himself to solving the riddle of the ‘Huge World.’ Einstein’s cleavage de-bonding event was his birth. He was born with a misshapen head. As a result, he learned to talk so late in life [age 3] that his parents feared he was mentally retarded. Normally a two-year-old will have a vocabulary of 200 words. He was so withdrawn or "set outside the group" that one governess nicknamed him ‘Father Bore’. Most dramatically, those who many consider the three greatest scientific minds of all time—Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein—were all viewed as ‘dunces’ in childhood [3].
Likewise, many of the world's greatest minds were failures, in once sense or another. Linus Pauling, for example, failed to take some required American history courses and did not qualify for his high school diploma. The school awarded him the diploma 45 years later only after he had won two Nobel Prizes [4]. Similarly, in 1895, Albert Einstein attempted to skip high school by taking an entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic, a top technical university, but failed the art portion.
[1] Colangelo, N. & Davis, G. (1997). Handbook of Gifted Education [2nd Ed.] Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
[2] Hoiberg, Dale [Senior Editor]. Encyclopedia Britannica 2002—Deluxe Edition [CD-ROM].
[3] Pickover, Clifford. (1998). Strange Brains and Genius—the Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientist and Madmen. New York: Quill.
Likewise, if we compare the only four people in the world to have ever received two Nobel Prizes, we find a striking similarity:
To appease the curious reader, Thims only recently came across this dual-laureate table in 2005. It was not the case in which Thims discovered this: early parental death / dual-laureate / chemical engineering / electrical engineering / biochemistry degree correlation and thus set out on some predetermined path. Rather, in life our journeys are defined or instilled by the rocks, pebbles, and or obstacles presented to us following our point of induction into this world. Hence, it is in each own's best interest to make note of patterns correlative to his or her own life.
