All Kids Are Born Geniuses,

Srinivasa Ramanujan Was The Strangest Man In All Of Mathematics, Probably In The Entire History Of Science. He Has Been Compared To A Bursting Supernova, Illuminating The Darkest, Most Profound Corners Of Mathematics, Before Being Tragically Struck Down By Tuberculosis At The Age Of 33, Like Riemann Before Him. Working In Total Isolation From The Main Currents Of His Field, He Was Able To Rederive 100 Years' Worth Of Western Mathematics On His Own. The Tragedy Of His Life Is That Much Of His Work Was Wasted Rediscovering Known Mathematics.

There Are Many Examples Of Old, Incorrect Theories That Stubbornly Persisted, Sustained Only By The Prestige Of Foolish But Well-connected Scientists... Many Of These Theories Have Been Killed Off Only When Some Decisive Experiment Exposed Their Incorrectness... Thus The Yeoman Work In Any Science, And Especially Physics, Is Done By The Experimentalist, Who Must Keep The Theoreticians Honest.

I Got A Four Year Scholarship To Harvard, And While I Was There They Wanted To Groom Me For Work In The Star Wars Program Designing Weapons Ignited By Hydrogen Bombs. I Didn't Want To Do That. I Thought About How Many Scientists Had Died In World War Ii.

So Often, Science Fiction Helps To Get Young People Interested In Science. That's Why I Don't Mind Talking About Science Fiction. It Has A Real Role To Play: To Seize The Imagination.

A Hundred Years Ago, Auguste Compte, ... A Great Philosopher, Said That Humans Will Never Be Able To Visit The Stars, That We Will Never Know What Stars Are Made Out Of, That That's The One Thing That Science Will Never Ever Understand, Because They're So Far Away. And Then, Just A Few Years Later, Scientists Took Starlight, Ran It Through A Prism, Looked At The Rainbow Coming From The Starlight, And Said: "hydrogen!" Just A Few Years After This Very Rational, Very Reasonable, Very Scientific Prediction Was Made, That We'll Never Know What Stars Are Made Of.