Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein – Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

May 16, 2013
Mario Livio, Space Telescope Science Institute; Amy Draves, Microsoft

We all make mistakes, because nobody is perfect—and that includes five of the greatest scientists in history: Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Einstein. But … their mistakes helped advance science—and science thrives on error, advancing when erroneous ideas are disproven. Mistakes in any discipline that is based on creative thinking and innovation are not only inevitable, they are an essential part of progress. Breakthroughs require the willingness to embrace risks and to accept errors as potential portals of discovery.

Speaker Details

Mario Livio is an internationally known astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of The Golden Ratio, a highly acclaimed book about mathematics and art for which he received the International Pythagoras Prize and the Peano Prize; The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved; Is God a Mathematician?; and The Accelerating Universe.