Home
OnlineArticles
Publications
KnowledgeLinks
NewEconomyLinks
HRStrategyLiks
XLAlumniPage
SignGuestbook
ViewGuestbook


The Creative Muse: Stories of Creativity & Innovation

Madhukar Shukla


  • Preface
  • Introduction

    STORIES:

  • Discoveries about Creativity
  • Laws Of Planetary Motion
  • Electricity From Clouds
  • Band-Aid
  • Pneumatic Tyres
  • Gummed Paper
  • The Trap Of Paradigm
  • Invention Of Sewing Machine
  • Just-In-Time System
  • Transmission of Nerve Impulses
  • Printing Press
  • Dangers Of Locomotives
  • Flashlight
  • Lawn Mower
  • Phonograph
  • Rubber Heels
  • The Periodic Table
  • Discovery Of Electromagnetic Fields
  • The Tao Of Physics
  • Congenital Impact of Rubella
  • Typewriter
  • The Theory Of Evolution
  • The Benzene Ring
  • The Wreck Of Titanic
  • Wagner's Rheingold
  • Underwater Construction
  • Search For The "Hidden Likeness"
  • Fermi & Nuclear Fission
  • Cash Register
  • Discovery Of Current Electricity
  • Cure Of Diabetes
  • Boolean Algebra
  • Principle Of Photosynthesis
  • Ball Point Pen
  • The X-Ray
  • The Fuschian Functions
  • Safety Glass
  • The Creative Triggers
  • Why Aeroplanes Cannot Fly
  • The "Brownies" Of Stevenson
  • The Blunder That Founded 3M
  • Invention Of AC Motor
  • Discovery Of Teflon
  • Toynbee's The Study Of History
  • Inventors' Blindness
  • The Excitement Of Creativity
  • Electric Fan
  • How Typhus Gets Transmitted
  • Proof Of The Big Bang
  • Mathematical Theory Of Chance
  • Coleridge's Kubla Khan
  • Vulcanisation Process
  • Structure Of The Crystals
  • The Compulsion To Create
  • 3M's Post-It Note Pads
  • Ice Cream Cones
  • The Structural Theory Of Atom
  • IBM And Computers
  • Helicopter
  • How Experts Resist Ideas
  • Creative Reveries Of Enid Blyton
  • Predictions In Gulliver's Travels
  • Float Glass Technology
  • Principle Of Immunisation
  • Journey Into Unknown
  • The Genius Of Karl Fredrich Gauss
  • Jean Coceteau's The Knights Of The Round Table
  • Neon Light
  • Transistor Radios
  • Precocious Minds?
  • The Masterpiece Of Sir Walter Scott
  • The "Fraud" That Changed The World
  • The "99% Perspiration"
  • Xeroxing
  • The Poem Of Stephen Spender
  • The Anatomy Of Inspiration
  • Travellers' Cheques
  • Edison's Fraud
  • Awe, Wonder And Alienation
  • The Logic Of Irrational

  • Epilogue: Themes & Patterns

    • The Genius of Karl Fredrich Gauss


    Karl Friedrich Gauss is considered to be one of the three great mathematicians of all times - the other two being Archimedes and Newton. He was a child prodigy who was obsessed with numbers. Many of his seminal mathematical discoveries, e.g., the method of least squares, were made while he was still in his teens. Before his twenty second birthday he had worked out a non-Euclidian geometry (he, however, withheld the publication, fearing ridicule), a method for constructing an equilateral polygon of seventeen sides, and had found he proof for many theorems.

    Most of his theorems were solved through intuitive flashes. On one occasion, he said: "I have had my solutions for a long time, but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." One problem, for instance, had continued to elude solution for a long time. At a very intuitive level, Gauss knew that every number can be represented as a product of primes in one and only one way. But his efforts to find a proof for this turned out to be futile. It took him four years, when at the age of twenty-four, the answer came to him in a insight. He wrote in his diary:

        "Finally two days ago, I succeeded, but not on account of my painful efforts. Like a sudden flash of lightning, the riddle happened to be solved... For my part I am unable to name the nature of the thread which connected what I previously knew with that which made my success possible"

    The discovery which made Gauss famous - the familiar bell-shaped normal Gaussian curve - however, did not come from his preoccupation with numbers, but from his interest in astronomy. Gauss was an avid star-gazer, and used to keep records of their position. But what he found was that position of stars changes in each record. Gauss reasoned that if one takes a number of observations of the same star, it would give a scatter. He devised a curve in which the scatter could be summarised by the deviation. One can now say that the star could be found in the scatter within certain limits of certainty.

    And so, the "normal curve" was discovered which has now become the basis of many statistical predictions of natural phenomena.


    *****
    1
    Hosted by www.Geocities.ws