Think of the brain power represented in this one image....

[Playinghardball]

Imagine being a fly on the wall!



Image taken at the 1927 Solvay Conference....

[Cirque du So-What]

1. I wonder if an assemblage of such brainpower

has existed - either before or since.

[TheKentuckian]

6. Are you certain that similar or maybe greater brain power has subsequently been assembled

but the output isn't so easily matched because there is less low hanging knowledge fruit now requiring greater technology and much more difficult work to build off that previous foundation?

I'm not saying that is the case but I do think it is more than possible that equal impact discoveries will take even more brains, utilizing much better tech to expand the limits of observation to move to the next levels.

We also cannot minimize the investment paradigm being different now, with less patience for investing that doesn't turn a corporate profit somehow even at the University level and that substantial funding most times will require corporate investment, which has to parlay quickly into profits soaking up the best a day brightest and forever limiting their horizons.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

9. Unfortunately, half of our population would burn those people at the stake for witchcraft

and heresy if they had their druthers.

[villager]

15. Half our Congress, would.

If not more.

[Cal33]

32. Would they be the same people who firmly believe every single lie ever uttered by the Extreme Right?

[Baitball Blogger]

2. I'm not worthy!

[IDemo]

3. OK, I can see Schrodinger

but where the hell is his cat?

[struggle4progress]

8. The photo actually commemorates Heisenberg's very accurate measurement of its velocity

[IDemo]

39. I don't know

To me, there's just something uncertain remaining..

[demwing]

29. I know it's there

I think I just saw it...

[YoungDemCA]

4. On the other hand, think of the brain power represented in THIS image...

[hobbit709]

5. The only brainpower in that image is in the painting on the wall.

[YoungDemCA]

7. Ole' George Washington looks like he's saying:

"Who are these assholes, and what the fuck have they done to America?"

[passiveporcupine]

24. Yes he does!

[Mira]

30. Washington's gesture:"Presenting Assholery multiplied" n/t

[ChisolmTrailDem]

10. oh boy! time to break out the image editor and twitter! nt

[TheKentuckian]

11. There would be more brainpower on display if you took a picture of random people at a bowling alley

[Capt.Rocky300]

12. Did you Google images for "Dunces" to find that?

[awoke_in_2003]

13. I just lost 5 IQ points. nt

[Helen Borg]

25. Where is Louie Gomhert?

He would get the brainometer needle into the negative zone!

[Nevernose]

45. Simple: he got lost

That moron couldn't find his own asshole with a map and a tour guide.

[MsLeopard]

37. DUzy!!

[hfojvt]

14. ultimately what did those 28 men and one woman do

Did all that brain power provide any benefit to the human race?

Did they ultimately do any more good with their brains than the average firefigher does on an average Sunday?

[Maedhros]

16. Are you kidding?

Pretty much every single piece of medical technology - x-ray machines, EEGs, EKGs, CAT scanners, MRI scanners - relies on fundamental principles worked out by one of those present in the picture.

[hfojvt]

19. so the main thing they did was

greatly increase medical costs?

and from the Timetables of technology, it seems that many other people were working on X-Rays, like Roentgen in 1895, Pupin in 1896 and Cannon (from Prairie du Chien!!) in 1897.

Did Oldendorf and Cormack really rely on those "fundamental principles" and equations when inventing CT scans?

I think the technicians might have found a way anyway.

Plus, you know what you do when your Bohr model of the atom breaks down?




You call a quantum mechanic.

[Maedhros]

21. I'm not understanding your intention in implying that the scientists in the picture

did not contribute as meaningfully as an anonymous firefighter.

With respect at least to Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Schrodinger etc. such a claim is patently false.

[erronis]

22. And Pasteur and Fleming didn't do anything useful either

I appreciate your attempt at humor but it would be hard to imagine the leaps of scientific advancement that happened without some of those brains being involved.

We'd be far better off from a medical expenditure standpoint if we just let people die of "natural" causes in their 30's or 40's. I don't know how old you are or hope to be, but I'd be long gone. Also the high medical costs of today's technologies become commodity costs (in my Candidian world.)

Perhaps it wasn't so much the individuals as the time (late 1800's/early 1900's) and the universities. Perhaps it was also the time when the world realized that it really could build incredible science experiments and weaponry.

[hfojvt]

47. but most people in the past did NOT die in their 30s and 40s

my ancestor Martin Honer for example, was born in 1649 and died in 1733, age 84. My patriarchal ancestor was born in 1705 and died in 1787, age 81.

Compares favorably to my classmate who had a heart attack at age 47.

[whopis01]

48. Well that data certainly settles the debate. n/t

[pnwmom]

28. No, the technicians wouldn't have found a way anyway.

Technicians had been fixing broken bones for eons but they hadn't invented the physics and engineering principles that laid the foundation for the medical advances that followed.

[NickB79]

23. Are you fucking kidding?

Medical technology beyond the microscope relies on their work.

EVERY piece of equipment we've put into space to explore the cosmos relies on their work.

Every energy source beyond 19th-century coal and oil burning (solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, etc) rely on their work.

And COMPUTERS! Their work laid the foundation for our understanding of advanced electronics that allow us to do things like post criticism of their work on DU.

[Helen Borg]

27. Yep, was thinking the same...

...

[greiner3]

33. Uhhhhhh,

[Shivering Jemmy]

34. Trollin' ain't easy.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

35. Well, without them we wouldn't have the internet, for starters, so you wouldn't be posting here. N.T

[Jim Lane]

46. Adding to the other responses: the Global Positioning System.

Millions of people (including even some average firefighters) use GPS devices, which are accurate only because the system, relying on Einstein's work, takes account of the relativistic effects on the clocks.

[lpbk2713]

17. Yeah but ...

they don't have any spiffy CinC cowboy boots.


?w=423&h=256

[Mr.Bill]

20. Early picture of Bush, Sr. beginning

to experiment with crazy socks. Once you've worn blue socks with a tux, there's no turning back.

[Kablooie]

18. Wow. Almost as much brain power as our House of Representatives!

[passiveporcupine]

26. And only one of them was female!

That is a shame. All that missed potential.

[SunSeeker]

31. +1

[FarCenter]

36. Only one other woman besides Marie Curie has won the Nobel Prize in Physics

First rate woman physicists are exceedingly rare.

[chrisstopher]

38. I would say

About 5000 I Q points.

[FarCenter]

41. Collectively more like 160 / log 29 = 109.

And given the personalities of some, the collective IQ may be even lower.

[Staph]

43. It reminds me of some remarks made by President Kennedy

at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the western hemisphere, on April 29, 1962.

"Ladies and gentlemen:

"I want to welcome you to the White House. Mr. Lester Pearson informed me that a Canadian newspaperman said yesterday that this is the President's "Easter egghead roll on the White House lawn." I want to deny that!

"I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

"Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet. Whatever he may have lacked, if he could have had his former colleague, Mr. Franklin, here we all would have been impressed."

[calimary]

44. I just had this crazy thought - what if, at the start of the Conference, all ANY of

these Greatest Minds in the Western World was talking about, together, was how slow the toilets flushed in the bathrooms at the hotel where they were all staying?

Just in a whimsical mood today.