Genius Errors by Mario Livio published by Aryeh Nir, translated from English by Emmanuel Lotem, 328 pages.
We all make mistakes. None of us is perfect. Not even the greatest geniuses in history. Charles Darwin, Lord Calvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle and Albert Einstein were brilliant scientists, all alike. Each of them made major contributions to their field - but each of them also failed miserably.
Darwin, the originator of the theory of natural selection, did not realize that the rules of inheritance that he used completely contradicted his theory. Lord Calvin, the great scientific luminary of Britain at the time, made a serious mistake in calculating the age of the earth.
Linus Pauling, the leading chemist in the world (who would later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry) built a completely wrong model of the DNA molecule.
Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle firmly rejected the idea of the "big bang" as the starting point of the universe long after much evidence had accumulated for its correctness. And Albert Einstein, synonymous with genius, made wild speculations about the forces preventing the collapse of the universe - which later paved the way for innovative ideas.
These five scientists expanded our knowledge about life on earth, about the development of the earth and the development of the universe, despite their errors - and precisely because of them. Errors resulting from creative thinking and innovation are an essential part of the scientific process. To achieve breakthroughs, you need the courage to take risks and the ability to treat errors not as an obstacle but as a catalyst for opening new horizons. Genius Errors, Mario Livio's brilliant book, is an enlightening tour of the world of science - and an insightful overview of the psychological factors that caused the errors of these five wonderful scientists.
Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). He received a doctorate in theoretical astrophysics from Tel Aviv University, and served as a physics professor at the Technion from 1981 to 1991. Prof. Livio won many awards for his research and excellence in teaching. Prof. Livio's filmed lessons are still used by students in all educational institutions in the fields of physics and mathematics, and his lectures in Israel attract thousands of people every year.
Reviews from abroad
Scientists make mistakes all the time. But these errors were often glossed over by the legends surrounding the great discoverers. Genius Errors, a thought-provoking book, based on in-depth research, offers a unique - and much more real - perspective on the journey to the most important scientific discoveries." The Washington Post
"Livio is a man of secrets: a scientist, a detective and a gifted storyteller. In genius errors, a spectacular work of thought, he proves to us once again that he is also one of the best popular science authors in the galaxy." Prof. Stephen Strugatz, Cornell University
"Some say that a genius is someone who is able to make all the possible errors in the shortest time. The genius of his heart is expressed in his ability to show how many things we have learned from such mistakes." Adam Rees, Nobel laureate in physics, 2011
"Mario Livio presents the discoveries of five great scientists, and shows how they arose out of confusion and controversy. His in-depth research debunks some legends that have been spread through less meticulous biographies. You don't need to be a scientist to admire this erudite, intelligent and wonderfully written book." Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal
Chapter 2 - The origin
There is majesty and grandeur in this view of life and its powers, which has been reduced to few or only one form; And as long as the planet revolved in its orbit according to the law of attraction without moving, the most beautiful and wonderful life forms developed from such a simple beginning, and they are still in their development.
– Charles Darwin
The most impressive thing about life on earth is its abundant versatility. Take a lazy walk on a spring day; You will surely see several species of birds, many insects, maybe a squirrel, some people (some maybe with their dogs) and a large variety of plants. Even if we look only at their most visible features, Earth's organisms differ from each other in size, color, shape, habitat, food, and abilities. On the one hand there are the bacteria that are a few thousandths of a centimeter in size, on the other hand there is the giant whale that is over thirty meters long. Among the thousands of known species of the marine mollusk known as the nudibranch, there are many that do not attract the eye, but some of them are painted in a multitude of colors that does not fall short of the most colorful creatures in our world. There are birds that are able to soar to unbelievable heights in the upper atmosphere: on November 29, 1975, a large eagle was sucked into the jet engine of an airplane at 11,550 meters in the sky of the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Other birds, such as the Indian goose, the minister swan and other migratory birds, regularly rise above 7,500 meters. The creatures of the ocean also strive to set records - depth records. On January 23, 1960, the record-breaking divers Jacques Picard and Captain Don Walsh of the US Navy, in a special research submarine of the type called Bathyscaff, descended to the deepest point on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean - the Mariana Trench south of the island of Guam. When they finally touched the bottom, and recorded a depth record of approximately 10,900 meters, the two were amazed to discover near them a new type of bottom-dwelling snails, which apparently were not bothered by water pressure of more than a thousand tons per square meter. On March 26, 2012, film director James Cameron reached the deepest point of the Mariana Trench in a specially built research submarine. He described the frozen landscape as desolate as the surface of the moon, but also reported spotting tiny hasilon-like creatures, falling from three inches in length.
No one knows for sure how many species live on earth today. A modern catalog published in September 2009 officially describes about 1.9 million species and gives their scientific names. But since most living species are microorganisms or tiny invertebrates, and many are extremely difficult to access, most estimates of the total number of species are nothing more than educated guesses. In general, these estimates range from 5 million to 100 million different species, although the number 5 to 10 million is considered quite reasonable. (The most recent research predicts about 8.7 million species.) There is therefore great uncertainty, but we should not be surprised by it, if we remember that one teaspoon of the dirt under our feet may contain many thousands of species of bacteria.
The second wonderful thing about life on earth, next to its versatility, is the wonderful adaptation that both plants and animals exhibit. From the tube-like snout of the anteater and the long, fast-moving tongue of the chameleon (capable of whipping its prey in about 30 thousandths of a second!) to the strong beak with the typical shape of the woodpecker and the lens of the eye of the fish, living organisms seem to be perfectly designed according to the demands placed on them by their lifestyles which they manage. Not only are the bees built to comfortably fit the plants with flowers from which they extract nectar, but the plants themselves also take advantage of the bees' visits for fertilization and reproduction, by applying pollen to the bee's body so that it can carry it on to other flowers.
There are many different biological species that live in an amazing mutual relationship of "hand washing hand", or symbiosis according to the researchers. The eyed lily (Amphiprion ocellaris), for example, is a fish that lives between the stinging arms of the sea lily Heteractis magnifica. The tentacles protect the sea urchin from its predators, and in return the fish protects the sea urchin from fish that feed on the sea urchins. As a final touch to this harmonious adaptation, the special mucus secreted by the shoshannon's body prevents the ill effects of the venomous arms of its surrogate on itself. There are partnerships even between bacteria and animals. For example, in hydrothermal cracks on the sea floor mud clams live in the hydrogen-rich water; It was found that they contain an internal population of bacteria that need hydrogen, and feed on it. Similarly, it was found that a bacterium of the genus Rickettsia guarantees existential benefits to the tobacco moth aphid - and for that reason, also to itself.
It may be added parenthetically that one of the most popular examples of amazing symbiotic relationships is nothing but fiction, apparently. Many books describe interactions between the Alligator and a small bird called the Egyptian Alligator (Pluvianus aegyptius). The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that when the crocodile yawns, the little bird "flies into its mouth and cleans its teeth" - this way the crocodile finds its food - while the crocodile "gets comfort and pampering". A similar description also appeared in the Wisdom of Nature, the highly influential book of the naturalist of the first century AD, Pliny the Elder. But there is no description of this kind of symbiosis in modern scientific literature, nor is there any photographic record of the behavior described above. Perhaps we should not be surprised at this, considering that Pliny the Elder was a rather dubious scientist: many of his scientific claims turned out to be serious and nothing more...
The abundant versatility, combined with the complicated interplay and adaptation of the prodigious abundance of life forms, convinced many theologians who dealt with the wisdom of nature, from Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century to William Paley in the eighteenth century, that life on earth needed the designing hand of a supreme architect. Such ideas appeared already in the first century BC. The famous Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero argued that the natural world must arise from some divine "intelligence":
And if all the parts of the world are made in such a way that they cannot be better in terms of their usefulness, nor more beautiful in terms of their appearance... If the things created by the hand of nature are better than those that are the works of art, and even art does not create anything without reason, then neither Nature as irrational.
Cicero was also the first to use the parable of the watchmaker, which was to appear generations later as a compelling argument for the virtue of an "intelligent designer". In the words of Cicero, "Receive in your mind: when you look at a statue or a painted panel in which art has been invested, and also when you see from afar the course of a sailing vessel, you will not doubt that it is driven by reason as well as by art; Or when you look at a clock, whether it is a painted sundial or a water clock, you realize that it indicates the hours thanks to the work of the mind invested in it, and not by the power of chance - whereas the world, which contains both those arts themselves and the artists who practice them, and everything, Do you think that counsel and wisdom are lacking?"
This was exactly the thinking adopted by William Paley almost two thousand years later. A made object shows the existence of a maker, just as a designed object shows the existence of a designer. A complicated watch, argued Paley, shows the existence of a watchmaker. In light of this, don't we have to draw the same conclusion about life, which is much more complicated? After all, "every hint of action, every revelation of design, found in the clock, is found in the works of nature; with this difference that as far as nature is concerned these are larger and more numerous, to a degree sublime beyond any calculation." This passionate argument in favor of the essential need for a "designer" (since the only alternative, and unacceptable to him, was luck or chance) convinced many of the philosophers who conceived of the wisdom of nature, until more or less the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Another dogma was hidden in the design argument: immutability. The species were considered by all to be immutable. The roots of this idea of eternal existence are rooted in a long chain of firm beliefs in other beings that were considered permanent and unchanging. According to the Aristotelian tradition, for example, counting the stars of the Sabbath was considered completely pure from any change. Only in the days of Galileo was this idea finally shattered, with the discovery of "new" stars (which were actually supernovae - ancient stars that exploded). However, the impressive progress of physics and chemistry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did indicate that certain essences are more fundamental and permanent than others, and that unity almost stands outside of time, in all practical respects. For example, it turned out that chemical elements like oxygen and carbon are constant (at least throughout human history) in their basic properties - the oxygen that Julius Caesar breathed is the same as the oxygen that Isaac Newton breathed. Similarly, the laws of motion and gravity formulated by Newton apply to every site, from falling apples to the orbits of the planets, and it seems that they are essentially immutable. But in the absence of any clear guidance on how to determine which natural quantities or concepts are truly fundamental, and which are not (despite the valiant efforts of empiricist philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume), many naturalists have chosen The eighteenth century simply adopted the ancient Greek idea of ideal species whose immutability characterizes each and every one of them.
These were the currents of thought about life that dominated the dome until one man appeared who was gifted with the audacity, vision and deep insight needed to weave a huge complex of disparate threads into one magnificent work of embroidery. The man was Charles Darwin (figure 1 shows him in his prime), and his grand unified vision turned out to be a theory more inspired than all the other theories that are not fundamentally mathematical. Darwin turned the ideas about life on earth from myth to science, nothing less and nothing more.
Comments
There are people who can be laughed at like Jims Randy, but I'm not sure that the one who dropped the twins would be resurrected - someone got the joke there. Sincerely
Israel, as you were famous in the casino, I had time after rehearsals to talk to Putin and Bush in a conference call, with Putin I talked about hair removal and Bush said that Santana "Genkiss". Famous people, in my life it's hard to believe, and I also had nothing to say, have a good day, with respect to blowing water
Israel
"Purpose" should be in quotation marks of course. But, culture is not "what comes out", culture is part of the process we call "life". Don't forget that there can be life without culture.
Israel
I know the opposite situation - very intelligent people sometimes display traits that are attributed to autism, such as paying too much attention to details.
Maya
Card counting is not illegal, but the casino is allowed to prevent you from playing if they believe a player has an advantage over them. It's called AP ADVANTAGE PLAYER.
At the time there was a well-known blackjack player named Ken Uston who sued the casinos that banned him from playing. The Supreme Court in Nevada ruled that it is permissible to ban AP from playing and even to keep them away from the casino. In Atlantic City it is forbidden to turn away players, and as a result the casinos have changed the rules until it is almost impossible to gain an advantage over the casino.
Camila thanks
So it is related..Savant syndrome Elek..
Miracles
Life has no purpose. The culture is simply what comes out.
Miracles,
I put in to survive and breed in one piece (even though they're not supposed to). That is, I refer to survival in the sense of the survival of your genes (because even reproducing is not enough, your children need to reproduce, etc.).
Israel,
I don't understand the field at all. Wasn't there a report in Bidian not long ago about people who got hit in the head or something and suddenly became geniuses in the field? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the link to autism is just a legend, but I don't remember where and how authoritative it was. So you're a card reader, huh? I never understood why it was illegal. Everything is their problem. That they will change the game if they feel there is a "loophole in the law". It seems pretty unreasonable to me to ban you from using your brain. Not bad. Play roulette.
Thread:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
Maya
The purpose of life is not to survive either... it is only to reproduce. Unless you are unicellular of course 🙂
Shmulik
I am allowed to enter, but not to play blackjack.
And yes, my ugly face is stuck in the biometric facial recognition system of most casinos. I was once in Mississippi and went into a casino where I hoped I could play without interruption. Even though I didn't present a certificate, the boss approached me with a broad smile: "Hello Mr. Shapira, you are welcome to play any game except blackjack." stingy
By the way, Reinman links to something I wanted to ask Maya Vuki or someone who understands the field: Is the legend true that autistic people have exceptional talents in areas such as mathematics, painting or music?
Yeah, just a bit of a bummer that you're working hard to do nothing but survive. But I guess that's an accurate description of life 🙂
Maya,
Maybe in the nth iteration there will be a decisive advantage over the parasites (unlikely of course) but what is the alternative? An ace is an ace even if the other side has a king, no,
Shmulik,
Good question. The question of the evolution of sexual reproduction is a question that has troubled evolutionists since the 30s. Perhaps surprisingly, it is difficult to find conditions in which sexual reproduction has an advantage over asexual reproduction. One of the conditions they found for this is a changing (dynamic) environment. A particular case of a dynamic environment is the case of parasites. What happens then is that a parasite comes to you and then you have to change quickly to prevent it from taking care of you (something that sexual reproduction helps with) but the parasite wants to take care of you so it also has to change quickly (as above) then you and then him etc. Therefore this theory is called:
"the red queen hypothesis"
Named after the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland who said "You run and run to stay in the same place".
I guess in some ways you can call it a winning ace. They have shown both theoretically and practically that it works. Sexual reproduction helps against parasites. On the other hand all you do is run to stay in the same place, so what kind of Ace is this?
Israel,
What a piece with the ban, piece of Rainman.
What do you mean you are not allowed in Nevada and California? Does this mean the casino will kick you out based on facial recognition or something, or is there a court order barring you from entering?
Shmulik
I saw the link. For me, poker is divided into two types: Tuesday with the company, and Ultimate against the casino.
With society, winning the game doesn't make a difference, but the social gathering, even if the amounts are small. It doesn't really matter how good a player you are either. If you play chess you probably know that the fun is playing with people more or less your ranking. As you improve, you can play with higher level players but the fun of the game doesn't change much. Same in poker with the company. The fun is the same as long as you don't enter amounts that start to become excessive for you, or there is someone who always wins. That's why there's really no point in improving because no one has any interest in getting in or getting others into tilt.
When you play against the casino, the goal is to make money. Since I'm not allowed to play blackjack in Nevada and California, Ultimate is the only option. I did not bad last year, but I just got tired of the game, what's more, I have a hard time with the cigarettes that are smoked in the casino, so I think that pretty much sums up the topic.
Maya,
Sexual reproduction that maintains the same mix you talked about is the trump card against parasites, right?
Israel,
Maybe you didn't see the link to mine about the favorite poker software?
pleasantness
I think you didn't understand. It is about populations and not about individuals. The space in question is not the environmental space around you.
Maya is very interesting...
It is clear that the one who wins is holding the alpha ruler
But there is no doubt that it is the space that will determine whether the individual will survive.
And yes, this also affects my day-to-day life...
Negative people don't stay with me.
wonderful evening !
Shmulik,
What I described is not my research. This is a study that started somewhere in the 70's and this is its main conclusion (the survival of the broad and not the strong) it has all kinds of other interesting conclusions. I used this theory (or rather its mathematical notations) to investigate the advantage of sexual reproduction versus asexual reproduction. The specific results of my research were that sexual reproduction has certain advantages and diploidy has certain advantages but it is very difficult to see the advantages of each without the other. Or in other words, it is very likely that sexual reproduction and diploidy evolved together (which also makes sense if you look at the way in which all kinds of bacteria carry out "sexual reproduction" by transferring genes from one to another. They always become a little diploid in order to succeed in this sexual reproduction). By the way, sexual reproduction has an advantage only when there is recombination between the genes (that is, mixing of all kinds of combinations of the different genes). We discovered several other interesting phenomena but this was the main discovery.
Maya
Michael claimed at the time that Yossi was the most relict. When I tried to claim that Idi was the most reliable, he replied that it was an idiotic argument.
Maya,
Always fun to read. What came up at the end of the study?
Israel,
http://m.ynet.co.il/Article.aspx?id=4614211
Shmulik,
Note. Just because I feel like it, I'm not sure how related it is. As you know, since Darwin some water has passed in the lake. In the past I worked with a theory called the quasi-sex theory. This theory holds that it is not the strong that survives but the broad that survives and I will explain. Imagine the space of all possible sequences for a son of, say, 20 bases. This space consists of 4 to the power of 20 options. Now give each of these sequences a fitness function ie, how fast such a sequence will replicate. Obviously, there are sequences that are "close" to each other, that is, those that differ from each other by one base or years, and there are sequences that are very far from each other. When the sequence replicates and you introduce mutations into the replication, most of the daughter sequences will be identical to the parent sequence and some of them will be slightly different (depending on the rate of mutations you introduced into the system, of course). Now imagine you have one streak that has crazy fitness. That is, it replicates the fastest, but it stands alone in the battle. That is, all the sequences that are close to it have zero replication ability, they are really bad. On the other hand, there is another sequence, with a reasonable but not amazing replication ability and the vast majority of the sequences next to it also have a more or less reasonable replication ability. Which of these two sequences will survive better? Of course it depends on the conditions (with a zero mutation rate, obviously the first, but when do we have a zero mutation rate?) but there are certainly conditions in which the one who survives is the second sequence - the wider survival and not the better. All this all comes to say is that sometimes it doesn't just matter how good you are but also how good the guys you associate with (I think this is a general lesson for life...) Hope my not really related anecdote is of interest to someone.
Israel,
I was also satisfied with the example of the poker.
Not necessarily the strongest, but the one who manages to transfer the genes.
Who do you think is stronger - a Neanderthal like Schwarzenegger or a gentle cox like Justin Bieber?
Well, who are all the rumors about?
Nissim and Israel thank you
Israel, thank you for the example, she helped me understand: what Darwin actually thought leads to the survival of the mediocre while he talked about the strongest surviving (I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth)
waiting
Shmulik
I will try to explain the mistake in terms of poker.
It is said that some mutation of sevens and princes produced aces.
You're head to head with Nisim, you're both all in, you pair Aces with fours, and Nisim pairs Kings with Queens.
You take the whole pot, it doesn't matter that the absolute value of his pairs is higher than yours. What matters is the ruling couple, the Aces, so you survive and Nisim goes to the ATM to get more money.
Also in evolution, those who survive are the ones with the genes whose phenotype is the most surviving traits.
So far everything is understandable. The problem is in the next step: the one who survived has the genes for aces and fours.
Ace is a strong card and a remnant like no other, four a little less.
According to the description of heredity before Mendel, heredity is the average of the two parents, like mixing colors. Therefore a pairing of Ace with Four (the surviving pairs) will produce many offspring whose average is about nine. We will therefore see a lot of sevens, eights, nines and tenths, while the population of aces will dwindle. About the "dilution" phenomenon, Jenkin wrote p. 45: "He will multiply and raise offspring.... These offspring will be in the middle between an average individual and an act of return (the Aces are called by Jenkin "act of return").
Therefore the quality of the gardens will decrease. As he said: "A black cat that has appeared once (a mutation) will not be able to turn an entire population of white cats into black, and it does not matter how great the advantage that the black color carries with it" (46).
In short - in the next round the descendants of the kings and the suit will eat the descendants of the aces and fours. After a few generations, the Aces, the surviving mutation, will actually diminish due to pairing with unlucky cards.
Heredity according to Mendel, the one that actually exists, solves this problem. According to Mendel, mixing the genes is not like mixing cans of paint, but like mixing a pack of cards where each card retains its value. Since the genes of the Aces are kept intact, whether dominant or recessive, over time they will get stronger, and the surviving mutation, the Aces, is the one that will survive.
Shmulik
Think of a pair of deer where the father is faster than average and the mother is slower than average. According to Darwin's understanding, the offspring should run at the speed of an average deer...
If you are interested, google blending inheritance
In other words, his conclusions could be rejected, and we really did. Perhaps Darwin would have thought differently if he knew mathematics better, but it seems to me that if he had been aware of the mistake, he would have realized that the understanding was wrong, and it is even possible that he would have reached Mendel's conclusions on his own.
Nissim, Israel
Thanks, but I have a clarification question. I lack the knowledge to understand why understanding the rules of heredity would contradict Darwin's theory of evolution. What did he claim that was later hidden? An offspring that is not the average of its parents but inherits a trait from another of its parents contradicts evolution as Darwin formulated or contradicts the claim of the average that was prevalent at the time?
About the book, I need to get it and then find time to read it. problem.
Gali Weinstein
Get ready to write a new chapter about LENR in the history of physics. Possible (partial) rehabilitation of the Fleishman-Pons experiment and its successors.
Andrea Rossi's E-Cat facilities will probably prove that LENRs can be built since nuclear reactions are possible at temperatures lower than 2000 celsius from simple raw materials (mainly nickel hydrogen and lithium). This year there is a chance for enough independent replications of E-Cat facilities to definitively prove that they work.
A huge story. If it is true, this is the most important physical discovery in the last 50 years (abundant and cheap clean fuel for humanity). Bill Gates is investing a billion dollars this year in LENR research in Italy (not in I-Kat though). If you want I will give you links to two popular books in English and other additional links.
Don't be alarmed by the reservations of most nuclear scientists. There is a paradigm shift in nuclear science and they are unable to digest it. Andrea Rossi is an unusual type, but he is smart and brave and did not give up on his studies despite the difficulties.
Shmulik
This is not his only mistake... In some ways Darwin was a Marxist. For example, he thought that the ears of domestic animals fell out of use! (Because they don't have to constantly listen to threats).
It is very worth reading "The Origin of Species". As genius as Darwin was, he was a humble and pleasant man.
Shmulik
Darwin did not understand genetics and thought that the traits of the offspring were the average of the traits of the parents. For example - running speed, or camouflage colors. Darwin did not know Gregor Mendel's peas, which showed that this was not the case.
The point is that if Darwin's understanding was correct, then it would undermine his explanation, because then there would be no competition between the offspring, and future generations would strive for the average value.
The full story is more complicated, and as Israel said, it is beautifully told in Mario Livio's book.
Shmulik
Look at Mario's book, page 47.
Miracles,
"Darwin, the originator of the theory of natural selection, did not understand that the rules of inheritance that he used completely contradicted the theory."
Can elaborate?
Thanks!
Now I understand where Richard Dawkins got the example of the watchmaker in "The Blind Watchmaker"
Write:
"...which apparently were not bothered by water pressure of more than a thousand tons per square meter."
At the bottom of the ocean, the pressure is a little more than a thousand kg per cmXNUMX - for every ten meters the pressure increases by XNUMX kg per cmXNUMX.
good week
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Abby, I knew you would choose this chapter (biology, evolution...). There is a section in the book that deals with Einstein and cosmology. Mario Livio went to the Einstein archive, sat there and tried to search in the correspondence between Einstein and George Gamo whether Einstein told George Gamo that the cosmological constant was the biggest mistake of his life. I responded to these chapters in the article I published: http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1033
The chapters in Livio's book on cosmology and astrophysics are interesting because Livio is an astrophysicist.
"These were the currents of thought about life that dominated the dome until one person appeared who was gifted with the audacity, vision and deep insight needed to weave a huge complex of disparate threads into one magnificent work of embroidery. The man was Charles Darwin (figure 1 shows him in his prime), and his grand unified vision turned out to be a theory more inspired than all the other theories that are not fundamentally mathematical. Darwin turned the ideas about life on earth from myth to science, nothing less and nothing more."
Without diminishing the achievement, this glorification of a single man, however smart he may be, is comparable in my view to the religious glorification of all kinds of puppets.
Both Drowin and Einstein were pioneers who knew how to understand a bit before everyone else and relied on scientific work done before them and at the same time; They both posted a moment or two before a colleague put out an almost identical posting and I spent my time hanging.
And that is the beauty of science - there is no dependence on one genius or another, every progress depends on the steps taken before it, and every discovery will come in its time (with a few lucky people who will both be in the right place and understand and publish a little before their friends).